Seems to me though that if you're willing to use telegram you might as well just use iMessage or What's App though?
Not necessarily. Wire has shown that a Telegram like UX is possible with end-to-end encryption, multi-device sync and multi-platform support. It's just that Wire and Signal are slow in catching up and seem like they need a slightly larger team and/or better management of the development.
> didn't know things were that much better in the Telegram world.
I keep trying any new messaging platform like this, especially if it promises privacy and better security. So I'd recommend you try Telegram and see for yourself what it provides. I'm heavily impressed by what it offers and use it as my primary messaging client, but don't like the crypto and the fact that normal chats are not end-to-end encrypted.
> Seems to me though that if you're willing to use telegram you might as well just use iMessage or What's App though?
That depends on which company one is more comfortable with on the privacy front. I don't consider iMessage to be equivalent to Telegram in features or UX (it's actually inferior and has issues with handling SMS as a backup option). WhatsApp being connected to Facebook is a no-no from the privacy point of view.
To clarify not that it's a fundamental tradeoff that you can't have end to end encryption with good UX, but that the current choice between Signal and Telegram is a choice between security (Signal) and UX (Telegram).
From everything I've read you'd probably be better off trusting iMessage or WhatsApp over Telegram.
And on push notifications, the app only receives a signal that there's fresh content to be requested. There shouldn't be any metadata leaked. Source?
If you had actually used both, it would be clear why people use Telegram over Signal.
Signal doesn't even have a desktop client for any OS!
So yeah, the statement from parent still stands.
There is basically one person writing the app[1], and given the company has just a few[2] people _volunteering_[3] for them, you cannot expect them to release a large amount of code across so many devices. They prioritized the highest volume first.
Open Whisper Systems primarily develops a strong encryption protocol (Moxie's efforts). If you didn't realize, this protocol was adopted by WhatsApp[4] and also Facebook Messenger[5]. So, the developers of those other applications needn't spend time/resources on the encryption, but can release Desktop clients for people like yourself to enjoy.
People who use Signal trust Moxie. People who dislike Signal _may_ care more about features than the security properties of the software (note, WhatsApp doesn't open-source their software[6], and Telegram instead bets people cannot break their encryption[7]).
Also, their app will supposedly run on any OS that Chrome runs. I'm sure that was the intention.
[1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop/commits/mas...
[2] https://whispersystems.org/#team
[3] https://whispersystems.org/workworkwork/
[4] https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepap...
[5] https://whispersystems.org/blog/facebook-messenger/