The post addresses that a bit, but it is a few years old now. I'm not a app dev so I have no clue about these systems. But the claim is that Apple doesn't give you a lot of control and that sounds like a very Apple thing to me. I mean aren't they well known for "my way or the highway" attitude?
One thing that the post oddly omits but has been possible and reasonably easy to implement on iOS for ages is simply bundling up messages, keys, etc into an archive in internal app storage and then letting the user AirDrop it to a Mac or another iOS device. I might be missing something but this is the sort of thing a capable engineer can have working smoothly in somewhere between an evening and a few days.
If they want to extend this transfer ability to other platforms, they could do what some comic/manga reader and video player apps have done and bundle in a tiny web server that allows the user to download/upload files with a web browser protected by a username and password, which is started/stopped as needed. As a bonus they could offer this on Android too for wireless backup management.
There’s also nothing stopping them from building Signal clients such that they’re able to directly connect to each other over the local network and do whatever transfers are required that way.
Apple doesn’t prohibit of any of these. I wonder why they weren’t explored.
> There’s also nothing stopping them from building Signal clients such that they’re able to directly connect to each other over the local network and do whatever transfers are required that way.
There's also nothing stopping you (or anyone else here) from adding such a feature. Either into the official, Molly, or one of the other forks.
You may also be interested in this feature request.
