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

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796 points _Microft | 4 comments | 31 Mar 20 11:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.628s | 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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impendia ◴[31 Mar 20 13:22 UTC] No.22737238[source]▶
I'm a college professor, and I'll share my perspective.

For one, Zoom did just work. (At least as a participant, rather than an organizer.) I tried it out, and it immediately worked. It did what all of us were expecting, with no fuss.

I also tried MS Teams. It seems designed with a different philosophy: that you use the software to do many different things, and you want them all integrated. (For example, it posted my meetings automatically to my Outlook calendar. I had never used this calendar before, and was only dimly aware that it existed.)

Moreover, it seems that the expected setup is a bunch of people, all at the same workplace, who communicate with each other consistently. My needs are different, with wildly disparate use cases: a departmental meeting; classes to teach; an online conference (https://www.daniellitt.com/agonize/); an online social gathering. Many of the people with whom I communicate don't work for the same employer. And I don't want to configure all of these "teams" in advance.

That said, I tried to get MS Teams up and running, to teach my class. This involved multiple emails back and forth to our tech support (it seems that I can't set up a "team" myself; I have to ask IT to do it for me). It didn't have its own whiteboard functionality so I had to download and run some separate software.

And, then, in the end... it didn't work. I was trying to teach a class, but my students couldn't see what I was doing. I had no idea why.

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1. gentleman11 ◴[31 Mar 20 18:37 UTC] No.22740879[source]▶
Zoom doesn’t just work. If the students want privacy, they are just helpless.

Edit: downvoted for speaking up for student rights. Sorry if it is inconvenient for the teachers

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2. 867-5309 ◴[31 Mar 20 19:11 UTC] No.22741275[source]▶
universities are organisations, which all force some incarnation of an internet usage policy. better still, the students are paying an arm and a leg for their lack of privacy. wouldn't it be great for the non-technical end user if these Just Works™ software could just bypass firewalls by way of VPNs, common ports, obfuscated servers or the like?
3. impendia ◴[31 Mar 20 19:53 UTC] No.22741745[source]▶
> If the students want privacy, they are just helpless.

This isn't true actually. As a student, send the following email:

"Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know some other classes are running Software X, could we try that instead?"

My university isn't mandating Zoom. Indeed, they recommended several software packages, of which their top recommendation was Blackboard. (Which is what I've been using so far. I have mostly joined others' Zoom meetings; I've only initiated them for a D+D game I'm participating in.) MS Teams was their second recommendation as I recall, and Zoom was below that.

At least at my university -- and I expect that this is typical -- individual faculty members are deciding how to best fulfill their own responsibilities. And I have emphasized to my students that I have never done this before, and that I'm happy to change what I'm doing if people have good suggestions.

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4. saagarjha ◴[31 Mar 20 21:09 UTC] No.22742609[source]▶
> "Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know some other classes are running Software X, could we try that instead?"

Hi [Student],

I appreciate your concern; however, our university has conducted a thorough audit of this software and found that it satisfies our needs. We will continue using it for our lectures.

Regards, Dr. [Professor]

Senior tenured chair of [Department], distinguished lecturer, [University]