Hello! I'm the author of this article, and one of the people that works on Chime. I'm not certain how this ended up on hacker news now, but oh well.

It is true, we're still not quite ready for general availability, but getting Real Close Now. If you'd like to check out the beta, we have contact info at chimehq.com.

As for our design goals, it's true that it can be very hard to put those kinds of things into words. We've tried to convey our aesthetic goals better on our website. Usually, this kind of thing is easier to show than to tell.

We're shooting for fewer features, built with more polish and style. Lots of people don't prioritize that kind of thing from their editor. But, I hope that we can connect with the few that are.