Gear News of the Week: Skype will close forever in May

Pour one Small drink. Microsoft has announced that Skype, the popular Video-Ralings app of the early years 2010, will finally be laid to rest on May 5.

Microsoft took over the app in 2011 for a stunning $ 8.5 billion – some 40 percent higher than its internal appreciation and the largest acquisition by Microsoft at that time. Some rapid maths by wired editor Jeremy White worked out, which is a cost for the company of around $ 1.6 million a day since the acquisition, and it is hard to believe that such a heavy investment has really paid off.

However, there were good days. In 2016, at its peak, it was estimated that there were around 300 million users – but then the competition arrived thick and fast. While we turned into new tools such as Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp Called and Microsoft’s own teams, Skype struggled to hold its user base. From 2023, the most recent data that Microsoft has shared to 36 million users worldwide.

Do not panic if you are one of them, the service is not immediately switched off. You have 10 weeks to migrate your chats and contacts to a free version of consumers teams, or you can also use the export tool of the app to download your data.

For those who decide to make the switch, all your Skype Group chats will transfer, and if you make the switch before your friends do, it will be delivered to Skype during the migration period. However, Microsoft removes the possibility to make a domestic or international phone calls after 5 May that once was the bread-and-butter functionality of Skype, but now a little better resolved by other tools.

Photoshop finally gets a good app

Thanks to Adobe

Wait, is there not already a photoshop app, do we hear you cry? Yes. Well, kind of. For everyone who is loyal to the brand, Adobe Photoshop Express Photo Editor has offered for basic photo processing on the road, but it has missed many more powerful functions that photoshop, well, make Photoshop. This week Adobe finally announced a full, official Photoshop app for the iPhone (with an Android version promised as “soon”), and it is much closer to what you would expect.