Icebergs (https://icebergs.com/) is one of the prettier ones I've seen. Not really an avid user myself, but then again I'm not using Evernote either. Sublime+Dropbox does it for me at the moment, but would love to find a better alternative.
My modus operandi is setting up bottom right corner of the screen as a hot corner for Show Desktop. Just bump your mouse down the bottom right, open up a finder window to find your file, start by dragging the file down to the right corner, which resets all windows – and the just drop! This is obviously even smoother for files that are already on the desktop.
To me, this more or less sounds like "I'm having trouble converting, so let's focus on the really, really, really interested users". In some occations this might be the right choice to make (the service you're providing have very low margins or it's a very complex service, so overhead from support becomes costly, or time is very limited), but in general it seems like very bad recommendation.
More likely it's your value proposition that is weak – either your customers don't understand what (value and/or service) you're providing, or your onboarding is just not good enough.
If you fail to tell your visitor what you're actually offering (before they signup) you might end up with a lot of users that sign up, just to learn what service you're actually providing. This is obviously much more likely if you're not requiring a credit card at signup. Try to have people understand WHY they're signing up before they actually do. They should be convinced that you're the right choice before entering their email.
Second: Your onboarding process is not over when the user has created their account. Guide your users. Give them examples, feedback and inspiration. Still having trouble getting started? Email them a week later and ask if you can help. Keep giving them reasons to come back and eventually convert.
"Historically, these features [vote ups and comments] are hard to use on small devices and I want to make an app that is easy to use."
I understand that you want to make a minimal app (personal preference or laziness – doesn't really matter), but claiming that vote ups ("like buttons") are hard to use on a mobile device just makes it sound like you weren't able to build it.
It's your app, and you can do what ever you feel fit with it. There's no need to excuse your decisions with made up facts.
But, you do realise that you just proved the authors point right? Sure, you would obviously be able to tell the difference, but I'm pretty sure that the difference would be a lot smaller than if you had requested table with ornaments and wooden inlays.
Sorry, but a frontend framework that claims to be responsive, but then has a demo that breaks down completely when resizing the browser is not really convincing to me.
