[chimeracoder]

> If the recipient chooses to not have SIgnal installed any longer, then your messages go into a black hole.

For two weeks, messages will be shown as sent but not delivered, and after two weeks Signal will not let you send messages to that number until it reconnects to the Signal servers.

For comparison, Apple automatically sends all SMS messages via iMessage opportunistically, and if the user then switches to another phone, all SMS messages from iOS users will be silently discarded in perpetuity. This is a big problem because the recipient has no idea that they're missing messages, and also if they no longer have access to an iPhone, there's no way for them to deregister their phone number from iMessage.

[zwily]

That hasn't been true for awhile:

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

They will also deregister you automatically after some period of time. What you described is the situation several years ago, but it's much better now.

[chimeracoder]

That's a link to deregister a phone number from iMessage without an iPhone, which is good, but I don't see any text on that page that confirms that they'll deregister you automatically, or if there's any user-visible indication of the issue. If that's the case, then I'm glad they finally addressed it, because it was definitely a problem for far too long.

In that case, Signal's current behavior would be comparable to Apple's, if Apple also deregisters you after a period of inactivity.