> They could’ve done this same backup with a 64 character recovery key and

Again: they could have, but it would have taken time and resources. The complaint here is not that Signal doesn't want to allow backups: they are just announcing a secure backup feature.

The complaint is that Signal did not do it earlier, and instead decided to prevent what they considered an insufficient solution.

> Putting iCloud alone in a separate bucket doesn’t make sense.

Of course it makes sense. What you say is akin to saying "end to end encryption makes no sense, because if you have to trust iOS anyway, you may as well trust the server".

Because I trust Android and run Signal there does not mean that I want it to auto-upload my messages to Google Drive. I don't see what makes it so hard to understand.

> One can only hope that the point about supporting other backup endpoints/storage gets implemented sooner rather than having to wait several more years.

Yes, I hope that too. On top of hoping, one could donate, to slightly contribute to paying the developers that work on it.