"until recently" meaning several years ago? Availability of terminals and support for the chip was what lagged, not the cards themselves (though that's a semantic argument in this case).

I would also somewhat argue that "most" cards are chip and signature, not chip and PIN. While in the US my cards all prefer PIN, it wasn't until I got out of the US that for some reason they all wanted a signature - talk about irony.

It's still far from ideal and not nearly as rigid as it is in Europe, but it's not quite as bad as you seem to think it is.

Is this really a characteristic of the card, rather than the reader? After all, my cards have pins. And often neither a pin nor a signature is required, although the chip is read. And when I buy something online, obviously the chip is not read.