I've never heard of wire but it looks good, aside from the pricing.

I'm hoping the future is a migration to a protocol such as Matrix, rather than users endlessly hoping from one product to another until they get sold out.

https://matrix.org/

I use Wire with some family members. The web client takes an age to load, and the best way to describe the UX of their mobile (Android) client is "Like wading through molasses".

Swiping or hitting the back key to leave a chat, entering a chat from the group/contact list, and tapping on a notification to reply in-app is absolutely painful.

Some inspired soul will say "Great! That's a golden opportunity for a Matrix bridge!" And it would be, if that wasn't explicitly against Wire's ToS. As such, it's the absolute dog of an app, or nothing. iOS must be better though, as nobody else has suggested switching. And between poor performance on Wire, or all the drawbacks of Whatsapp, I know which one I choose.

While they use the Signal protocol for encryption, they do leave more metadata on the server. For example your recently contacted contacts and all your groups.

People don't use the most secure option, but the option that other people they want to be in contact with use.

I've never heard of wire, so I doubt any of my friends or family have either

Wire is intended for team chat. You can't use it to talk to your friends, parents, or third party companies. Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Matrix, etc. are general purpose chat networks with millions of users each. Different use case. Matrix you could use for corporate chat and lots of companies do. It's one of the few federated options out there currently. Oss too.