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I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical keyboard, and not on my phone. Tele

I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical keyboard, and not on my phone. Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works. Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway. And if they introduced ads, with an option to pay a subscription to remove them? Here’s my…well, it’s Telegram, so here’s my cryptocurrency, I guess…but here’s my money.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
iagovar 6y ago
I would pay. I like Telegram too, for some reason I find myself liking it much more than WhatsApp, it feels snappier, web and desktop Telegram fells nice, and I don't need having my SmartPhone connected. Some time ago it was unthinkable due to network effects, but now many of my peers have Telegram too, even non-tech people.
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  WhatsApp doesn't let me login from two mobile devices. Can't use it from phone and tablet at the same. It's moronic. Telegram does, so...
  - ddeck 6y ago
    You may not prefer it, but I don't think it's moronic; it was a design choice. Whatsapp messages pass through their servers, but do not remain there. They are effectively sent from the sending device to the receiving device. This means that your messages reside on your device. When you use the desktop or web client, it's basically remote operating your phone. This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale with relatively few resources. [1] Telegram messages reside on their servers. This allows for features such as those discussed above - multiple synchronized clients etc. The downside (aside from potential privacy concerns) is that it requires much larger amount of infrastructure, which presumably is one of the reasons they need $700 million. [1] http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-grew-to-nearly-500-million-users-11000-cores-an.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-grew-...
    - f1refly 6y ago
      Whatsapp is pretty much proprietary xmpp, and xmpp handles multi-end to multi-end encryption graceously.
      - brianacton 6y ago
        Not true. While WhatsApp may have started with xmpp / ejabberd at the beginning, it quickly diverted away from xmpp and has its own protocol
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      "This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale with relatively few resources." And now they've had a decade to address the issue.
    - shp0ngle 6y ago
      It's also for security reasons. Telegram is not E2E encrypted, WhatsApp is. Telegram has the option of E2E encrypted messages, but that then works only from one phone/PC.
    - robbiep 6y ago
      I don’t know how true that really is. I have never used backup for WhatsApp but just the other day, out of the blue, every conversation from late 2017 to now that I had deleted popped back into my inbox. Can’t explain that one easily
grishka 6y ago
As I understood it, there will be official ads in channels. Channels already do ads, but Telegram will step in to be an intermediary and take a cut. So from the end user perspective, nothing will change at all.
tazjin 6y ago
Telegram's clients are amazing (including the ones developed by the community, such as telega.el for Emacs). It is miles ahead of any other messenger in the UX department. Friends of mine who have (reluctantly, in some cases) tried it out quickly got stuck because of this single point. The other thing it's got going for it is that its protocol is designed to work in low-bandwidth environments. Yeah, the protocol looks crazy - but it really does work. Imagine being on an underground train and only occasionally getting a few seconds of internet while passing a stop: Most messengers will at most start showing you a "Connecting ..." status, Telegram will do a full state sync (minus media files, of course) in the same time.
- izacus 6y ago
  Telegram actually provides a fully featured C++ library you can just include - it has a pretty good API that does most of the complex things for you. You just register callbacks for message lists / chat messages and notifications and you're all set. This allows people to easily build full-featured clients for pretty much any platform and it makes it easy for everyone to keep up. Very smart platform design. I'm very disappointed that something made to be more open like Signal completely failed in this aspect and has ended being a walled garden with poor quality clients.
  - sim_card_map 6y ago
    Exactly, Signal creator is actively against 3rd party clients, because they use his infrastructure for free: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
    - mercacona 6y ago
      The issue was branding, not bandwidth. There’re 3rd party clients: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android
      - 6y ago
hu3 6y ago
I love Desktop Telegram for many reasons but mostly because it's Open Source: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
schoolornot 6y ago
I wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken them. A beautiful product.
- bennofs 6y ago
  Last I tried, telegram desktop on Linux didn't support e2e encrypted chats which is sad.
  - imsesaok 6y ago
    telegram desktop doesn't support e2e chats at all. it's a mobile only feature, and it doesn't sync between devices, even between phones.
    - swagmoney69 6y ago
      Actually the Mac client supports it for some reason.
- Angostura 6y ago
  Signal user here, on iOS and using the Mac client. What am I missing?
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    - Seamless sync and backup - 100x more people use it (I joined Signal years ago and I still have 1 actual conversation) - The speed and the level of polish is unmatched Of course for any serious Signal user it isn't an alternative but for many of us we only use it for postcard level anyway.
    - XorNot 6y ago
skinkestek 6y ago
There won't be ads in 1-1 or groups. There will be ads in channels that opt in (but those already have sponsored posts in some form already often, only manually inserted.) So, some will say: how long before they change their terms again and the ui is plastered with ads? We'll see. So far Durov has kept his words to a degree that few others have. Edit: I also think Telegram has dropped the cryptocurrency-idea now.
vxNsr 6y ago
Only quibble I have with Telegram is their “find nearby” feature, it’s clearly abused by bad actors to funnel users to porn, so my family sees the whole app as not family friendly, bec they don’t want their tweens and teens with phones, that are mostly locked down, having this loophole. There no way to turn it off, or lock it behind parental control, so until then we’re still stuck on WhatsApp.
- Sunspark 6y ago
  Good thing your family has no access to the internet, otherwise they might be exposed porn in google image search.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    That’s a very reductive take... especially considering I stated that their internet access is pretty limited. Just because most Americans or even most people in the world think the vileness of R-rated stuff is inevitable and harmless doesn’t make them right. It absolutely warps your view of humanity and imho many ppl today suffer from PTSD and don’t even realize it, just thinking their altered brain chemistry is a normal part of life. The trauma that a constant diet of porn and violence does to your brain is significant and damaging, whether consumed in a pub in 1700s Germany or a random website today.
    - TheButlerian 6y ago
      Hang yourself, retard!
- postmodernbrute 6y ago
  Just deny location access to the app.
pradn 6y ago
Having to QR-code into a web-app is quite a pain. I wish we didn't tie identities to a phone number like that. Messenger offers even more seamless "handoff" between form-factors, and that's why I find myself preferring it. It's easy for web state to go away, so I find myself having to log back in more often than I'd like. Plus, you can't log in when the phone's out of battery. I really like how snappy Telegram's mobile clients are. I like their stickers (probably the most fun of any chat app these days) and their link preview is quite good. So I'm rooting for them.
fsflover 6y ago
> it has feature parity with mobile clients There are no secret chats though.
- eptcyka 6y ago
  The native macOS client (not the Qt port) does have secret chats. Or at least it used to. The only other platform besides Android and iOS.
vmception 6y ago
its so crazy to me how big Telegram is to crypto, while there are people who only know about Telegram for giant conspiracy groups like Q-anon which I never run across

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

iagovar 6y ago

I would pay. I like Telegram too, for some reason I find myself liking it much more than WhatsApp, it feels snappier, web and desktop Telegram fells nice, and I don't need having my SmartPhone connected. Some time ago it was unthinkable due to network effects, but now many of my peers have Telegram too, even non-tech people.

hypertele-Xii 6y ago
WhatsApp doesn't let me login from two mobile devices. Can't use it from phone and tablet at the same. It's moronic. Telegram does, so...
- ddeck 6y ago
  You may not prefer it, but I don't think it's moronic; it was a design choice. Whatsapp messages pass through their servers, but do not remain there. They are effectively sent from the sending device to the receiving device. This means that your messages reside on your device. When you use the desktop or web client, it's basically remote operating your phone. This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale with relatively few resources. [1] Telegram messages reside on their servers. This allows for features such as those discussed above - multiple synchronized clients etc. The downside (aside from potential privacy concerns) is that it requires much larger amount of infrastructure, which presumably is one of the reasons they need $700 million. [1] http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-grew-to-nearly-500-million-users-11000-cores-an.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-grew-...
  - f1refly 6y ago
    Whatsapp is pretty much proprietary xmpp, and xmpp handles multi-end to multi-end encryption graceously.
    - brianacton 6y ago
      Not true. While WhatsApp may have started with xmpp / ejabberd at the beginning, it quickly diverted away from xmpp and has its own protocol
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    "This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale with relatively few resources." And now they've had a decade to address the issue.
  - shp0ngle 6y ago
    It's also for security reasons. Telegram is not E2E encrypted, WhatsApp is. Telegram has the option of E2E encrypted messages, but that then works only from one phone/PC.
  - robbiep 6y ago
    I don’t know how true that really is. I have never used backup for WhatsApp but just the other day, out of the blue, every conversation from late 2017 to now that I had deleted popped back into my inbox. Can’t explain that one easily

grishka 6y ago

As I understood it, there will be official ads in channels. Channels already do ads, but Telegram will step in to be an intermediary and take a cut. So from the end user perspective, nothing will change at all.

tazjin 6y ago

Telegram's clients are amazing (including the ones developed by the community, such as telega.el for Emacs). It is miles ahead of any other messenger in the UX department. Friends of mine who have (reluctantly, in some cases) tried it out quickly got stuck because of this single point. The other thing it's got going for it is that its protocol is designed to work in low-bandwidth environments. Yeah, the protocol looks crazy - but it really does work. Imagine being on an underground train and only occasionally getting a few seconds of internet while passing a stop: Most messengers will at most start showing you a "Connecting ..." status, Telegram will do a full state sync (minus media files, of course) in the same time.

izacus 6y ago
Telegram actually provides a fully featured C++ library you can just include - it has a pretty good API that does most of the complex things for you. You just register callbacks for message lists / chat messages and notifications and you're all set. This allows people to easily build full-featured clients for pretty much any platform and it makes it easy for everyone to keep up. Very smart platform design. I'm very disappointed that something made to be more open like Signal completely failed in this aspect and has ended being a walled garden with poor quality clients.
- sim_card_map 6y ago
  Exactly, Signal creator is actively against 3rd party clients, because they use his infrastructure for free: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
  - mercacona 6y ago
    The issue was branding, not bandwidth. There’re 3rd party clients: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android
    - 6y ago

hu3 6y ago

I love Desktop Telegram for many reasons but mostly because it's Open Source: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop

schoolornot 6y ago

I wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken them. A beautiful product.

bennofs 6y ago
Last I tried, telegram desktop on Linux didn't support e2e encrypted chats which is sad.
- imsesaok 6y ago
  telegram desktop doesn't support e2e chats at all. it's a mobile only feature, and it doesn't sync between devices, even between phones.
  - swagmoney69 6y ago
    Actually the Mac client supports it for some reason.
Angostura 6y ago
Signal user here, on iOS and using the Mac client. What am I missing?
- skinkestek 6y ago
  - Seamless sync and backup - 100x more people use it (I joined Signal years ago and I still have 1 actual conversation) - The speed and the level of polish is unmatched Of course for any serious Signal user it isn't an alternative but for many of us we only use it for postcard level anyway.
  - XorNot 6y ago

skinkestek 6y ago

There won't be ads in 1-1 or groups. There will be ads in channels that opt in (but those already have sponsored posts in some form already often, only manually inserted.) So, some will say: how long before they change their terms again and the ui is plastered with ads? We'll see. So far Durov has kept his words to a degree that few others have. Edit: I also think Telegram has dropped the cryptocurrency-idea now.

vxNsr 6y ago

Only quibble I have with Telegram is their “find nearby” feature, it’s clearly abused by bad actors to funnel users to porn, so my family sees the whole app as not family friendly, bec they don’t want their tweens and teens with phones, that are mostly locked down, having this loophole. There no way to turn it off, or lock it behind parental control, so until then we’re still stuck on WhatsApp.

Sunspark 6y ago
Good thing your family has no access to the internet, otherwise they might be exposed porn in google image search.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  That’s a very reductive take... especially considering I stated that their internet access is pretty limited. Just because most Americans or even most people in the world think the vileness of R-rated stuff is inevitable and harmless doesn’t make them right. It absolutely warps your view of humanity and imho many ppl today suffer from PTSD and don’t even realize it, just thinking their altered brain chemistry is a normal part of life. The trauma that a constant diet of porn and violence does to your brain is significant and damaging, whether consumed in a pub in 1700s Germany or a random website today.
  - TheButlerian 6y ago
    Hang yourself, retard!
postmodernbrute 6y ago
Just deny location access to the app.

pradn 6y ago

Having to QR-code into a web-app is quite a pain. I wish we didn't tie identities to a phone number like that. Messenger offers even more seamless "handoff" between form-factors, and that's why I find myself preferring it. It's easy for web state to go away, so I find myself having to log back in more often than I'd like. Plus, you can't log in when the phone's out of battery. I really like how snappy Telegram's mobile clients are. I like their stickers (probably the most fun of any chat app these days) and their link preview is quite good. So I'm rooting for them.

fsflover 6y ago

> it has feature parity with mobile clients There are no secret chats though.

eptcyka 6y ago
The native macOS client (not the Qt port) does have secret chats. Or at least it used to. The only other platform besides Android and iOS.

vmception 6y ago

its so crazy to me how big Telegram is to crypto, while there are people who only know about Telegram for giant conspiracy groups like Q-anon which I never run across