I felt the same about having to signup to even see it do something. It's really not about THIS particular product or the people behind it. It's just that I'm expected to do this with seemingly ever new thing that I want to interact with. It's become so common that, for me, the signup gate becomes a decision point where I ask myself "Do I really care/want to see this?". The answer is no a non-zero amount of times and I do bounce off it at that point.

I do get the desire for them to want an audience to give updates to and try to have a consistent user base. The thing that sucks is that not only do they want to email me, so does everyone else. I've never been very protective of my inbox but the volume has gotten crazy recently so that's had to change. If they let me in and then asked for my email to continue after a couple minutes I'd be more inclined to provide it.