I'm amazed at the extent to which Google Meet's user interface remains at a preliminary technology demonstration or undergraduate project level of user interface design. The grid/gallery view is barely functional:
- you have to pick a number of tiles to fit on the screen, it cannot deduce the right number automatically
- the selection for this is buried in an options dialogue
- there is no facility to hide participants that don't have video from the tile grid, wasting screen space with useless squares containing an enlarged initial
- there is no way to flip to a second page of tiles if there are too many people to fit on the screen together, you just get a random sampling of call members
- there is apparently no way to drag to resize the space dedicated to the screen sharing display versus the video tiles
There are also other ridiculous limitations and rough edges, like the chat box silently truncating messages at about 500 characters.
It is as if nobody who works on the product is forced to use the thing.
>I'm amazed at the extent to which Google Meet's user interface remains at a preliminary technology demonstration or undergraduate project level of user interface design.
Google specializes in starting projects, not refining or maintaining them as part of some strategic vision. Expect to see Meet in the Google Graveyard in a few years when some enterprising L4 decides he needs a promotion and creates Google Meetings (not to be confused with Meet).
duo was renamed to meet. the original meet was originally named hangouts meet, which was distinct from hangouts the consumer product, but not from hangouts the business product, which hangouts meet (later "meet" and now "meet original") was part of along with hangouts chat (different from "classic" hangouts which continued the discontinued google+ hangouts) which is now google chat (not gchat aka gtalk, which got merged into hangouts).
in 2019, google announced gsuite hangouts users would be migrated to google chat and google meet (that's meet original) and consumer hangouts would be discontinued. in 2020 for obvious reasons the original hangouts cancellation and the other hangouts cancellation were both cancelled. eventually google launched google chat (for consumers) and google meet, and finally discontinued the last consumer hangouts. at this point i think all users of all of google's hangoutses have been migrated to one of the google chats or meets, or back to the google voice app (for voice customers). but if you're still using meet original you're supposed to migrate to meet (originally duo).
I mean, if you want to always be on the cutting edge, then a new technology rewrite every few years keeps you from sinking into the corporate pit that caught blockbuster. You always stay relevant at the cost of annoying non-paying customers (who won't have any meaningful recourse to complain or to stop paying you).
It kind of makes sense, as long as you don't care about your customers.
I don't entirely agree with your assessment, because Google still got caught flatfooted on LLMs despite years of fits and starts on various voice assistants and Gmail/Docs writing suggestions.
Yet I still somehow vastly prefer it to Zoom, who seemingly randomly chooses where to place 5 different windows, all with important controls, each time anyone on the call shares or unshares their screen.
Yeah, the great Zoom UI, where it pins itself to the top during a login process so I can't get to my password manager under it, or when it prompts for MFA and you can't paste in so you have to go type it by hand.
The single most important feature for business calls is screen sharing and basically no app is letting us see a 1 to 1 pixel full screen copy of the screen that is being shared. All of them add nearly useless, unhideable and opaque bars with participants, buttons, etc. At least Skype lets zoom into the screen.
Looking at the faces of people, yeah, maybe for casual chat before the call starts but then it's useless and very few people ever complained if someone turns the webcam off.
Tuple.app and Slack’s “huddle” are the two best screen share quality I’ve seen. I pair with both. Zoom is better than google hangout which seems to compress in a way that messes with fine lines and text.
I'm also still amazed nobody though of adding a simple pointer to the interface, the amount of minutes lost trying to convey to someone where some object on their screen is located is adding up very quickly.
We switched to using pop once I discovered the people behind screen hero made it. The ability to pair and also draw on the presenters screen is a massive win and it also shows the whole screen with annoying non removable bar like teams.
Good argument: Screensharing with zoom, pointer, and “take control” (available in zoom) is the killer feature of videocalls. We use it for both demos and support, and screensharing isn’t emphasized enough.
What?!? Video calls are the primary way people my age communicate with their friends, at least in my bubble. Bascially, I’m either using discord if I’m gaming or facetime otherwise. I facetime with multiple people almost daily.
This is virtually everyone I know my age irl in California.
I've been using discord for a decade or so and think I've only used video once or twice in that whole time. I'm also close to 30 though. I guess it's generational.
Edit: Oops, you added your age! Apparently it's not generational hah!
Honest question: why do you need to see their faces and their surroundings, and conversely show your face and what's around you? Furthermore if you have to aim your camera to you and watch the screen you can't put the phone in your pocket and move around and do things, or pretend to be 100% committed to the call.
An audio call is much more convenient in my experience.
Edit: I could be your father but I did my share of video calls when they were a novelty and I was about your age. They didn't stick. They got interesting again only when we couldn't see our friends during the covid lockdown.
Why not? I’m probably gonna pull my phone out to answer the call, maybe they have something cool to show me?
…Actually the whole “commitment to the call” aspect is probably the biggest reason why we all do this, and why I default to videocalls. It’s OK to answer with your screen off, or pocket your phone mid call, but I can also judge the other’s ability to chat based on the video feed.
Which age is that? The only people I would video chat with in a social context would be my parents. Everything else is work related or meeting in some association. Early thirties.
i'm always astonished at how little anything got better despite the intensely escalated demands. web cams didnt get (much) better. most people's jobs didn't get them good mics. widespread understanding or adoption of latency's impact on conversation flow didn't become common knowledge. hybrid setups with some people on videoconf and some people in the office are still steaming hot garbage everywhere i've ever worked (yes cisco has some cool stuff but basically nobody leans into it).
Its like in the standoff over remote vs in-office everything got frozen in place.
Continuity camera for people with a Mac and an iPhone is an enormous upgrade in visual quality. You can even apply effects like Portrait Lighting, center stage, and portrait mode. I frequently talk from places with iffy lighting and built in webcams just can’t handle the lower light like iPhone cameras can.
The camera is good, but the execution is extremely un-Apple to me. It looks really not slick from a hardware stand of point. They don’t even have an official mount. Just put a good (AI) camera in the laptop.
Unfortunately Continuity Camera requires both devices to be logged-in to the same iCloud account which is a no-go in many large corporate environments.
I wonder if improving webcams came on laptop manufacturers' roadmaps when video-conferencing became a big thing (i.e. because of COVID-WfH), for years they seemed to be mostly a "add the cheapest webcam and tick a box in the features list" item.
Apple seemed to have noticed. The newer MacBooks have better webcams.
I suspect that much of the use for work was using pre-pandemic, or hardware purchased at the beginning of the pandemic. It takes years for a hardware update wave to soak in to the general user base.
> iOS phone-as-camera is exceptionally good, but if you need your phone during a meeting, that’s not so great.
Which kinda confirms the point doesn't it? Even the iPhone company failed to put a decent camera into their 4000$+ laptops. It's utterly baffling how awful the 16" M1 camera is in comparison to even cheap Logitech external ones.
I might agree with you over a relatively short time frame, but it sure feels like we came a long way since trying to get multicast to work or getting more than 5 people into a session.
- there is almost no need for video, in the sense of looking at someone face;
- we need audio (there since the telephone invention BTW);
- we need ability to share AND PARTIALLY CONTROL (part of) the screen, so we need mechanisms to quickly allow selecting partial controls availability to third party (witch is very hard to get, especially across different platforms);
- we might need to be able sharing paper, meaning documents where someone who do not have an expensive digital whiteboard solution need to write down something because it's quick and simple than try doing the some with some apps and available input devices;
- quick file sharing with many points on how in term of privacy and data leaks risks.
Apart from the audio, most of the rest if it's here it's just partial and/or buggy...
I've already seen curious things of people with a clipboard manager sharing screens AND their clipboard with third parties, with "interesting" data in it, forget do lock file sharing abilities and so on. A tech savvy user rarely do such mistakes but most users do them regularly and for a real remote work model all such things must be there and in good shape.
AI centered video conference application could create new revolutions in the next years. We were promised to get "AI talking heads" in SF movies 20-30 years ago. It is an obvious idea but we are not there yet.
We still need a harware "revolution" that will enable systems with powerfull AI capabilities (generative AIs, capacity to train models on your data and only based on vocal indications) Imagine such environments running on desktops or even on mobile phones. This could force a migration of all software as plugins in "video conferencing" software that allow us to talk with AIs (of your employer or entertenment AIs or with other people that have AI as first filters, AI for dead people, celebrities, etc) in a safe but totally integrated approach. I am a researcher and like to imagine possible futures but defenetly there are so many opportunities for revolutions in these areas for the next 10-50 years...
This is one of those "revolutions" I struggle to wrap my head around. Even if such an AI system worked without a hitch, I think I'd end up using the traditional Skype model of video calling real people more often. It just doesn't feel "obvious" to me, but maybe I'm terribly out of the loop.
I'm not quite sure I understand the benefit of AI talking heads compared to the people you are wanting to talk to? Novelty, streamers, etc. it might make sense, but a business meeting or chat with family and friends? If someone is replacing themselves with their AI avatar then why have any sort of meeting?
It feels like the least simple solution to video calling.
If the generative part moves entirely client side, then video calls could become extremely low bandwidth. You could basically stream just the audio of the conversation, and each person could still feel like they were still talking face to face through photo realistic avatars. I don’t how likely this is, but maybe it makes reliability so good that it’s a no brainer. You could probably not even look at your camera if you’re busy, but the other person will still feel like you’re looking at them the whole time.
> Video was supposed to be the future. Instead, it’s just another way to pick up the phone.
If you are using it to replace a phone call, then yes. It is just another way to pickup a phone.
On the other hand, I've worked with teams that use video as a virtual team room where a small team (3 to 5 developers) hangs out most of the time just like they would in a physical team room. They tend to mob or pair program most of the time. Sub groups break out occasionally if they need to work on something in parallel. Business owners just "drop in" to ask questions or provide feedback. Other teams that need to coordinate just jump into the room instead of trying to setup meetings.
Not every one wants to work like that, but video can provide a way of enabling highly collaborative environments that typically would only happen by giving the team their own room and requiring everyone to come into the office.
“Dead” seems like it would mean video calls went away, but in fact they’ve just become commonplace. If they are used slightly less now than two years ago that’s perfectly explainable by loosening of social distancing requirements rather than a lack of interest in the medium. My workplace still uses video as the default for almost all meetings to the point where it would be somewhat rude to have a meeting that unnecessarily left off the option to attend virtually.
It’s not a “dead” revolution if you won the war just because you’re no longer churning out shiny new weapons every day. There was victory, and now the market & society is consolidating the territory.
1. ML algorithm to make me look like I'm looking straight at the camera/you. Solutions are coming, but I bet there's an uncanny valley aspect. It shouldn't look like I'm staring at you constantly.
2. Better document/whiteboard collaboration. It should function the way it does when in a room together: everyone sees the document easily and clearly; gesture at a part of the document; highlight/focus the part you're editing, etc. Actually, a lot of that could be better than in-person.
I don't need reaction animations and other features-in-searh-of-a-use-case.
(1) doesn't seem like it should be too hard, relatively: there's likely a direction you're mostly staring at, or keep returning to (especially on audible cue), so you can 'just' adjust that one to be direct-at-camera, and add noise or show original otherwise.
(I can't do this, but I say relatively easy in the sense that you're already doing the CV and adjustment all the time, so it's just an adaptation to turning it off or doing it slightly differently sometimes based on aspects of the CV.)
Personally though I just plan to print a widget to fix my webcam to my microphone stand, so it's at a more eye-level height and moves in and out of the way with the mic.
How am I just finding out about this? Apple is doing a very poor job of promoting it.
I just tested, and if you look just a little to the left, right, or above the camera, the effect goes away -- smoothly apparently (I was creating the effect for someone else, not seeing it myself)
What do you not think it's the other way around and serving my needs as a WFH fan for example? Without this, I'd have to go to the office now often (no, a phone conference is not the same)
It's super interesting how many things that sci-fi predicted would be ubiquitous and essentially got right because they seemed obvious -- and then this; something that was predicted with that same "obviousness" and it didn't much happen.
I think it's because in a lot of use-cases async text is so much better for all parties. You can lose nuance but someone can send me an email or text message and I can answer it from anywhere at any time. I can be on a run, I can be at the park, I can be in bed half asleep, whereas video requires a lot more.
I'm not suggesting being on call 24/7 is good or healthy, but video calls are just not as easy. I don't want fast and cheap but I do want easy.
I want a pinhole camera in my monitor so I can make eye contact with the other side when I'm looking at them. That's the biggest lacking feature to me on pc video conferencing.
- you have to pick a number of tiles to fit on the screen, it cannot deduce the right number automatically
- the selection for this is buried in an options dialogue
- there is no facility to hide participants that don't have video from the tile grid, wasting screen space with useless squares containing an enlarged initial
- there is no way to flip to a second page of tiles if there are too many people to fit on the screen together, you just get a random sampling of call members
- there is apparently no way to drag to resize the space dedicated to the screen sharing display versus the video tiles
There are also other ridiculous limitations and rough edges, like the chat box silently truncating messages at about 500 characters.
It is as if nobody who works on the product is forced to use the thing.