I lean on Skype (and Macs) pretty heavily, so when a fairly substantial update for the VOIP/messaging service goes live, my ears tend to perk up. The new Skype 5.6 update has me especially tickled — it’s now available for folks of the Mac persuasion, and it thankfully packs a handful of bugfixes as well as a slew of new (and arguably overdue) features.
Perhaps most important is the ability to delete part or all of a conversation in one fell swoop. I don’t find myself needing to do this too often aside from when I’m locked in throes of a particularly nasty digital cleaning spree, but I’m sure there are more than a few of you out there sighing with relief right about now.
Textual indiscretions aside, Skype 5.6 also brings with it the ability to auto-update when new versions are released (which the Windows version has been able to do since last September), as well a new full-screen app mode that comes seven months after Apple’s Lion update added support for the feature. Better late than never, as they always say.
Throw in a new dynamic layout for video calls that puts the current speaker at the top of the window and the ability to combat background noise by fiddling with Automatic Gain Control, and that’s a wrap for the 5.6 update. Mac users will probably want to jump on this one, and fortunately they can download the new version of Skype right here.
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