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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

I've more or less given up on Signal and recently moved to Telegram. I'll still use it for actually private communications, but for 90% of my chats, all I need is "good enough" security which both iMessage and Telegram cover with a much better UX than Signal.

I can't believe in 2021 they still don't have a native Mac app nor proper chat backups, and the recent announcement of their bullshit crypto integration clearly shows where their priorities are.

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> for 90% of my chats, all I need is "good enough" security which both iMessage and Telegram

True for iMessage, but not for Telegram. Telegram has great UX, but does not use end-to-end encryption.

(Telegram's "secret chats" do not count - they're not the default, nobody ever uses them, they only work on mobile, and use a questionable DIY encryption schema)

Not true for iMessage either. The addition of iCloud Backup (on by default, and not e2e) functions as a key escrow for iMessage, rendering iMessage also no longer end-to-end encrypted (as Apple receives a copy of the keys in the automatic nightly backup).

Turning off iCloud Backup doesn't fix it either, as your conversation partners back up their keys.

To add to the list of flaws with Telegram's secret chat implementation, you have to wait until the other user is online before you can start one.

Why don't they count? I use them. I don't really care if they only work on mobile. This questionable DIY scheme operates under the assumption that Moxie is the only one allowed to roll his own crypto: MTProto 2 is fine.

Everything is a convenience trade-off, all the time, for everyone.

E2E encrypted chats do work on Telegram Desktop if you’re on a Mac and using the native Cocoa build (not the Qt one).

I remain curious as to why this is, but I use them often enough when I find Signal a pain in the ass to deal with.

iMessage is not end to end encrypted either.

To be honest, for 99.9% of my use cases, I value the ability to easily log in to different devices with automatically synchronized one-to-one/group chat log more than true E2E encryption, granted that Telegram has promised to not analyze the data, and I decided to trust Durov. The other 0.1% is when I need to send credit card numbers, which I can also do within Telegram, using secret chat, which does have E2E encryption.

Have you considered Matrix / Element as the alternative?

I’ve seen my connections mitm in group conversations with telegram

Signal does have a native Mac app. I use it every day.

It's not, it's an Electron-based app (not bad by default). Even says so on their Github page: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop

Unless you're using a non-official version?

It’s also a bit worse if you’re an M1 user. Last I checked it also runs under Rosetta in compatibility mode, which is annoying since it drains my battery more as a result.

I’ve been awaiting an M1 build for a bit now...

I didn't realize you were using the term "native" to refer to compiled versus interpreted.

The electron binary is native code, of course, or it wouldn't execute.

> The electron binary is native code, of course, or it wouldn't execute.

It isn't always; after all you can run Electron apps under Rosetta if there's no M1 version of it even though it is compiled but for Intel instead.

So, it is not as simple as "compile vs. interpreted" because there's emulation as well.

In this case, many folks don't consider Electron as native because it doesn't use native UI frameworks as it uses the web stack tech (JS/CSS/HTML/etc) to render. That's why Electron apps can run with same UI on all desktop platforms.

In other words, pure Swift/Cocoa UI apps are considered to be native macOS apps, even if its backend is built in any native language like Objective C/Swift/Rust/C etc.

However, same folks will not consider Electron apps as native even if it is using a backend built in any native language such as Objective C, Swift or Rust/C/C++.

By native I don't mean Electron. I don't want to run yet another browser in addition to my main one. Even WhatsApp is better at this level, at least you can open it in your existing browser.

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