Improving first impressions on Signal
Signal was superb for a long time, and then received a hefty chunk of funding, and, although I may be wrong, has declined since then, and in fact jumped the shark about a year ago.<p>They attempted ever more forcefully to make users to set a PIN to protect server-side state; it started with a dialog at the bottom of the screen, obscuring about 20% of the user list, which could not be dimissed, and then after a few weeks progressed to the a full page dialog, which could not be dismissed - rendering the app unusable.<p>All you saw upon starting was the full page dialog demanding you set a PIN to continue using Signal.<p>I did not want any server-side state, and so did not set a PIN, and stopped using Signal.  After a few weeks, the full-page dialog went away, and I found I could use Signal again.<p>Signal actually blocked usage of the app to force users to adopt unwanted new functionality.  It&#x27;s hard to imagine any app doing well with such mis-management.<p>I opened a thread discussing the problem on their support&#x2F;public discussion forum, which was deleted.  I also at first opened a bug report on Git, before I understood it was all intentional, this was also deleted.<p>Since this experience, I&#x27;ve regarded Signal as on the way out, but it&#x27;s still the best there is right now.