| I think I can speak to how Matrix deviates from your list: - There are technically native clients on every platform, so best kind of correct? However, the "official/main/most popular" client is Electron on Desktop. Partial credit? - Yup - Yup, even when using E2E, which is a hell of an accomplishment. You transfer keys from other devices, but not entire messages. - Yup. E2E or not, your choice. - Searchable history plus E2E is... hard, to say the least. Some clients will index your conversations while they happen, but that's obviously not the perfect solution. That said, the APIs are so open that I've written python scripts before that download and search entire rooms. It would be possible for a client to do the same, though I don't think any do. Non-encrypted rooms are trivial to search, or course. - This as well. As before, keys transfer from other devices, messages load from the server. - This seems like it was engineered to exclude Matrix. The default in every client is matrix.org, and there's no reason you ever need to change it if you're not concerned with it. In fact, most clients make it a couple clicks to change it (https://app.element.io/#/login). - Not totally sure this is possible, but Matrix comes very close. On par with Signal, though with different tradeoffs (stored history, for example). |
- No custom emojis; every chat application known to man has regular emojis supported in UTF-8, so the author must be talking about custom ones. Which Matrix still does not have: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1951
- I don't think doing what PGP does is really impressive, but okay, fine, one point.
- Matrix group chats are broken and this is why Synapse eats resources like a bear.
- No searchable history on all but one Electron client on one platform when using E2E is terrible, and further supports the argument that all clients suck.
- Point; this is pretty convenient.
- XMPP sucks. Matrix is modern XMPP. People don't like getting confused with servers and similar nonsense, and when your homeserver goes down, you're out of luck. Federation sucks. The question wasn't made to exclude Matrix, it was made to point out that federation sucks. Matrix didn't invent federation; it chose it long after it failed.
- E2E degrades experience greatly. To list my two biggest complaints: It ruins search for all but one client, and the UX around keys is terrible. I frequently have conversations with incredibly technical people and they'll still get absolutely stumped by the UX around keys, because it's awful.
Two out of eight isn't bad.
I use Matrix every day. I have for years; long before the recent rebrand, and multiple presidents have vacated office since I started using Matrix. I love Matrix. But there's no reason to act like it's some golden goose when there are problems from 2015 that are no closer to being fixed than they were at the time. It's a comfortable protocol for usage by people who have powerful computers. For everyone else, it still isn't great.