Skype for Business on Mac - December Update available today!

Gary - thanks for your feedback on the client. I understand the ask and I am gratified you were at the session back in Sepetember @ Ignite. Hopefully you made it the end of the session where I discussed the Microsoft approach. The plan we have been executing on is to stack rank futures and offer updates frequently. So far we have released functionality twice in the last nine weeks since launch. I am hopeful we will see another update in Feburary. The message for customers is that we are treating the Ma cclient as important and updating frequently as resources permits.

My .02 for what its worth - Comparison to the Windows client is an interesting way of evaluating the Mac client. The windows client is older - and has had many releases since OCS days. It is a mature client with many features... some of them not being used by the majority of users. The Mac client is brand new - built from the ground with a modern coding approach for the Mac. Setting the release bar so that we must have parity or be "on-par" would have likely meaned we would not release anything for a long time. And for a vast majority of our customers - that was not acceptable. This was confirmed by customer surveys and interviews when we began the project in mid 2015.

So we choose a defined timeline and get the client out with what might be considered most features for the average user. And we are getting really good feedback that the experience is much better then the 2011 client. Not perfect of course but much better.

Customers should expect us to continue adding high priority features as we work through the backlog. The backlog is very dynamic because as more customers start using the current version, we get more feedback on items that adjust our priority. File sharing via chat is an example of this. Before launch, we had pushed that feature out for later development. After launch, that changed a lot and we should see it much sooner. All due to feedback.

So please keep sharing your thoughts - I and Microsoft really appreciate it.