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

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796 points _Microft | 2 comments | 31 Mar 20 11:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.573s | 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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untog ◴[31 Mar 20 15:27 UTC] No.22738434[source]▶
It just amazes me that the "just works" solution here is still a native app. Plenty of reasons to use native apps but in 2020 video conferencing really isn't one: WebRTC is capable and supported by every major desktop and mobile browser. It's literally one click and you're done!
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Saaster ◴[31 Mar 20 15:46 UTC] No.22738664[source]▶
None of the WebRTC based options just work, they're all glitchy and cannot scale up to even moderate amounts of users. We have Google Hangouts Meet for free for our org, and we still pay for Zoom because It Just Works.
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1. basch ◴[31 Mar 20 17:30 UTC] No.22739978[source]▶
Even having the "unblock this site from camera and microphone" burried in the browser chrome or settings pages somewhere is a dealbreaker. It's too easy for people to mindlessly click "no" to can this access your microphone, because of the way the browser pops it up during first use, instead of during "install."
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2. noahtallen ◴[31 Mar 20 18:29 UTC] No.22740764[source]▶
True. Even the adblocker and autoplay blockers can prevent video and audio from working in Hangouts. I have had issues with hangouts when joining meetings with important people — and my browser’s autoplay block feature prevented the video feed from working.