Teams is bundleware, people don't use it because they want to, but because it was delivered by the IT contracts for microsoft products and is hard to un-bundle (until the EU stepped in and they are now making it optional).

I suspected that MS will play some pricing tactics to make this uneventful. A search turned up:

> First, beginning October 1, 2023, we will unbundle Teams from our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the EEA and Switzerland. We will instead simply sell these offerings without Teams at a lower price (€2 less per month or €24 per year).

For any company already using MS/Office 365, €2 is pretty low but with Slack at $7.25 USD it still seems viable.

I've never used (or even seen) Teams, but I've seen the userbase graphs. Teams is killing it.

Kinda like how Apple Mail is the most popular email client. I've literally never used it and don't know anyone who does. And yet...

I know people use it because Apple Mail generates out-of-office responses to mailing list mail (with List-Id: headers and other indicators).

frankly i don't believe Apple Mail is the most popular email client, while i do believe Teams is most popular work chat app

If we're counting the mobile version probably everyone you know uses it.

really? literally every single person i know uses native gmail app or outlook

I use native Mail app for my gmail and yahoo accounts. Otherwise I'd have to use two apps in place of one app.

And Outlook for work, because that's what's allowed. And Slack; we don't use Teams.

my friends with yahoo use gmail client, i'm not sure how they do it

The GMail app supports IMAP because they merged the AOSP Mail client into it a couple of years ago.

Your theory is that most people who have iPhones do not actually connect their email addresses to the native mail application?

not only do most people not have iphones, but my theory is that to count as a user you have to actually use it to send or read your emails

> to count as a user you have to actually use it to send or read your emails

Yeah that's my definition as well. Pretty sure almost everyone who has an iPhone does that, at least now and then

personally i'm signed out on Mail on all my iDevices, seems to be true of most of my peers as well

Data point of one: I have never set up email on my iPhone. I very rarely read email on my phone, and I use Safari/webmail when the need arises.

So when you want to use email on your phone you first open a web browser, then navigate and sign in to your email service? I don't know anyone who does that, do you get some benefits from doing it that way (if i understood correctly)?

I will say, i use Firefox for YouTube rather than the native app, but only because Firefox extensions _infinitely_ improve the browsing and viewing experience (ad blocker, distraction blockers, subscription grouping and sorting, automatic resolution selection).

I do this on a couple of devices where I'm not logged into accounts at the device level, so app stores are not always available. I end up using the browser for most things, and it works great. The browser saves my sign-ins, and I bookmark sites like apps to make them easy to access. Works really well, dodges all the weird app stuff (app store exclusivity, permissions, app upgrades, etc.). This is all Android though, so I can add all my browser add-ons that make the web usable, which helps the overall experience tremendously.

Yes, that's what I do.

I guess there's no real benefit, I just mainly didn't want to create an email account with Apple, or connect my existing email to Apple's mothership.

Teams is utter crap. People only use it because their IT departments tell them they have to. It’s like anti-virus and about as useful.

Agreed. I am required to use Teams at my day job, and it feels like a rushed product from a soulless company--because that's exactly what it is.

Why would that matter? Certainly, important to know the why, but more important is the outcome. "Who are you selling to?" and "Who has the spend/budget?" are most important. Tragic, for sure.

If Teams is problematic enough, and enough upper-middle folks who have to use it are unhappy and want more productive tools, the guys with the spending power may decide otherwise. Salaries are a far bigger expense than chat software licenses; wasting 1% of time of 50 highest-paid employees would tip the scale on numbers alone.

And yet, it's better than the alternatives. It replaced Cisco Jabber at my workplace.

It isnt. Slack is better. Google meet is better. Even Zoom is better and their approach to UX design is randomization.

> It isn't. Slack is better.

"You don't get it Steve, that doesn't matter." [1]

That actually does not matter if Teams is making larger progress than Slack. I prefer Slack over Teams too, but to disregard the market force and market position of Teams is naive.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFcb-XF1RPQ

I don’t disregard its market position. I just don’t have anything to say about it.

Sure, I prefer Slack to Teams, but I'd take almost anything over Jabber, and Slack was never a real option.

Smart move for Slack’s owners to sell when they did.