Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services
by bubblethink on Monday February 20, 2017 @09:58PM
(#13692893)
Signal only works on phones and chrome desktop right now. So other devices are anyway out of question. Their goal has always been secure messaging for the masses, and not necessarily secure messaging for everyone and everything under the sun. I think it's a fair trade-off if it helps them get the user base by keeping it simple and similar to WhatsApp. Even in its current form, it's incredible difficult to get people to use it. It would be much worse if it were any more complex UI-wise.
Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services
by ReverseCold on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @12:32AM
(#13693522)
Yes, chat needs to not be just basic texting or no one will use it.
iOS users get iMessage which is great, but there's no cross platform version.
Telegram + Encrypted by default and in groups would be best, but they have some (invalid) reason for keeping it unencrypted.
Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services
by Anon1096 on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @04:53AM
(#13694499)
There's a lot of features Telegram offers that can't be used with e2e encryption. Stuff like link previews and many bot functionalities are things that come to mind that my group uses very frequently.
Which to me is an incredibly dumb idea since it leaves out WiFi only terminals such as el cheapo tablets but also small embedded boards etc. I know some of these messaging apps can be used on WiFi only devices, but never in an immediate way and I believe you can't use them at the same time, which is very dumb. This also kills any IoT use for instance, where you could make N copies of a Linux image that boots a node, connects through the same user and sends the data available to its IO pins, or accepts commands to drive them in order to turn on or off other appliances.