Electron
Comments
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Extremely disappointing! I'll be forced to use this through my company but looks like we'll be revisiting that decision soon. As a personal app I've been using for years, I bid you adieu.
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I have been a user and advocate for 1Password for about ten years now. I started using it because Mac users I respected raved that it was not just a good password manager, but a proper Mac app written by people who care about Mac apps. I got friends and family members, and people who work for an organization I run so I get to choose some of their software, to use it because it was a proper Mac app written by people who clearly cared about Mac apps. On more than one occasion, I have described it as "the BBEdit of password managers" which is the highest praise I can give a piece of software.
Version 8 has thrown all that away. While 1Password 8 may run on the Mac, it isn't a proper Mac app. It does not work or feel like a Mac app. And that's heartbreaking.
There are two kinds of people who use Macs: Mac owners who just got a Mac because they like their iPhone or the only computer company they really know about is Apple and who spend most of their time in Chrome, and Mac users who prefer the Mac because we recognize that proper Mac software is better. The UI paradigm is better. The way the software works is better. If the same program is on Mac and Windows, and properly written to the UI standards of Mac and Windows, the Mac version will be better even if their functionality is exactly the same.
Not all Mac software is good Mac software. I mean, not even all of Apple's software is good Mac software, and that's always been the case: in the 1990s, Apple had a lot of software that dragged System 6 UI elements into Systems 7, 8, and 9, in the 2000s Apple had a lot of Carbon software that never quite felt right on OS X, and in the last few years the first generation of Catalyst apps were... subpar.
But good Mac software? Good Mac software made the whole thing worth it. The more expensive hardware. The (declining over time) compatibility issues. Apple's often-paranoid behavior. Apple's own insufficiently adherent software. All of that was beside the point when you could use good Mac software.
And 1Password was very good Mac software. It felt like it was born on the Mac, written by Mac users, and meant for Mac users. That's why I bought multiple versions over the years, and signed up for the subscription model without blinking an eye. You made good Mac software, so of course I'll give you a few dollars a month or year to keep that going.
And then you dropped this beta of 1Password 8 on us. This is not good Mac software. It does not feel like Mac software.
In 1Password 8, you can't move the preferences window around — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.
In 1Password 8, the close button for the preferences window is on the left — that is now how Mac software is supposed to work.
In 1Password 8, the menubar, which should be the hub from which you can do anything you need to do in an app, has been completely neutered to the point that you can't even create a new item from it — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.
In 1Password 8, you now create new items from a drop down menu inside the window, but that menu isn't a real menu and if the window is too small it cuts off and you have to scroll the blasted menu — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.
In 1Password 8, collapsing and expanding sidebar items is not animated it just happens — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.
In 1Password 8, drag and drop appears badly broken in the same way its broken in all Electron apps — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.
In 1Password 8, the user cannot change or add shortcuts for menubar commands (what paltry few there are) — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.
Will any of these things, and the dozens of other foreign behaviors and UI weirdness, be fixed before the final release?
I get that SwiftUI isn't where you need it to be yet. I get that Catalyst is something of a pain. But I cannot for a minute believe that apps produced through either of these APIs would be as foreign as this... thing you've produce is. This is not proper Mac software. A ported iPad app that felt and worked like an iPad app would still be more Mac-like than this RAM-hungry, disk-swallowing thing.
1Password 8 works on a Mac, but it doesn't work like a Mac.
AgileBits used to be a company that cared about that. Instead, post-VC money, it seems y'all are now a company that responds to complaints about 1Password 8 on Twitter with "the app is built on Rust!" as though user angst is about the back end and not the wholly, completely deficient user experience of this app.
Electron apps are almost all garbage. Because they encourage people to build lowest-common-denominator UIs. Which is fine on Linux or Windows, where even the best UIs are pretty bad. But Electron, in my experience, cannot be used to build even a remotely Mac-like application. You certainly haven't achieved that here.
I use a Mac because I want my software to be Mac-like. I'm not alone in that regard. I use 1Password because until version 8 it was Mac-like. Even version 7, with its unreliable Safari extension and general bugginess, meets the Mac-like standard.
I won't pay for un-Mac-like software. I certainly won't subscribe to it. I know my subscription, the subscriptions of the family members who just use what I tell them to use, and the subscriptions of the employees whose software stacks I control don't amount to much — and in comparison to the VC cash raining down on you, it amounts to nothing. Yet in the end, if this is what the future of 1Password on the Mac is, you'll lose more than some subcriptions: you're going to lose the advocacy of people like me, and people like the Mac users who recommended your app to me.
That might not ding your bottom line, but it would likely turn your homepage brag about being "the world's most-loved password manager" into a lie.
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It is very disappointing to read that the next Mac App will be based on Electron. When I choose 1Password years ago (instead of going with LastPass), it was precisely because it had a native mac app. It was the only reason.
I won't repeat all the concerns that other users have raised in this forum and I hope that this move will be reconsidered.
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I think some perspective is in order. This has been said elsewhere, but its worthwhile to reiterate:
This is the team that built 1Password 7, a world-class, thoughtfully-designed Mac app. If anyone can make an Electron app a good citizen of the Mac, it's these folks. Let's have some faith :).
1Password 8 for Mac is a beta. I'll admit that performance characteristics and UI/UE are pretty rough at the moment, but let's reserve final judgment until the 1.0 ships.
Finally, I'll note that I could care less about which technology 1Password uses under the hood of its Mac app. If the app is efficient, thoughtfully-designed, and implements core Mac conventions, the particular framework(s) it uses are unimportant to me. At the same time, I've yet to use an Electron app that meets these standards, so the team certainly has their work cut out for them.
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I think some perspective is in order. This has been said elsewhere, but its worthwhile to reiterate:
1) This is the team that built 1Password 7, a world-class, thoughtfully-designed Mac app. If anyone can make an Electron app a good citizen of the Mac, it's these folks. Let's have some faith :).
2) 1Password 8 for Mac is a beta. I'll admit that performance characteristics and UI/UE are pretty rough at the moment, but let's reserve final judgment until the 1.0 ships.
Finally, I'll note that I could care less about the technology 1Password uses under the hood. If the app is efficient, thoughtfully-designed, and acts as a good Mac citizen, the particular framework(s) it uses are irrelevant to me. This being said, I've yet to use an Electron app that meets these criteria, so the team certainly has their work cut out for them...
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Thanks for that, @Dilettante. ❤️ I really appreciate the patience and reminder here. I've been using Macs since before they were Macs -- I don't even want to tell you what my first Apple device was. ;) So I absolutely understand the love and insistence many Mac users have for the particular attention required to make an app feel at home.
In return, we will be trying very hard in the coming weeks not to let you - and others who are willing to place their faith in us - down. I will point out one thing regarding the "under the hood" technology: one of primary jobs - perhaps the primary job - of a password manager is the security of users' data. And while we've always led the field in that regard, it's worth mentioning that the new generation of 1Password apps takes data security to a whole new level. I'm aware you may have been referring to Electron when you said "under the hood," since that is definitely what we chose as the toolkit for the front-end UI that users (and that includes all of us here) interact with in 1Password 8, but I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone about all the work that has gone into the back-end that people never really see, but which helps keep their most-sensitive data as private and secure as possible.
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A huge amount of people starting to leaving 1password thanks to Electron, including me!
Nice way to kill one of my favorite apps ever. Very sad day.0 -
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Very disappointing development. Due to this new setup and the high subscription price, I will cancel my subscription.
With Apple's keychain working across all Apple products, I am using 1P less often anyhow.
I guess Agilebits made a trade off between cost savings and losing some customers.0 -
Hi all
If you reach out to the billing team they will work with you to give you pro-rata refunds on your subscriptions.
I hate to do this but it seems the 1P Team aren’t really hearing the feedback - I suspect the only way this will change is if people start voting with their feet and wallets.
To the dev team I am sorry, you guys are awesome and seem like great people but this Electron and refusal to acknowledge you’ve done the wrong thing/made a mistake is just a deal breaker.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck - if you decide to dump electron and do macOS properly I’ll be back.
Cheers
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I know that pretty much anything I would say has already been said numerous times in this thread and others, but I wanted to make sure that my voice is added to the list of dissatisfied long-time users. I've been a 1Password user since the very beginning, bought into 1Password Families without hesitation, and brought 1Password to my company where we now have about 50 active users. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but a decent monthly subscription.
The IT company we work with is partners with LastPass/Logmein, and has been wanting to demo their software to us for a while. I always told them no, that we were satisfied with 1Password. However, with the move to Electron and all the issues that come with it, there isn't really a benefit for us to stay with 1Password. And on top of that, the price of LastPass for my company is almost half of what 1Password charges. Before the change I would have happily stayed a 1Password user, as I have no problems paying more for a better product/experience, but I now have a demo scheduled with LastPass and I'm fairly certain we'll be making a switch.
I don't know what direction I'll go in personally with my Families subscription, but at the very least I'll no longer be an evangelist of the software, and that bums me out.
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Has anyone else noticed that the AgileBits employees keep responding to technical concerns about the new app, but it's crickets whenever someone brings up the numerous violations of Mac interface expectations?
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I’ve been a paying customer since 1Password 4, and never had occasion to use the forums until today. Like so many others in this thread, I had used other password managers in the past. Some were bad, but most were fine. I was a LastPass user when I discovered 1Password and for the first time ever, I was delighted with a password manager. Not just satisfied, but DELIGHTED! Do the people at AgileBits know how truly rare this? How many companies can truly say they delight their customers? Not just meet their needs, but go above and beyond in all the right ways so that their customers become enthusiasts and evangelists. On top of it, your app was a premiere Mac and iOS app. The experience of using 1P on a Mac has gotten some people to switch to Macs from other platforms, and the experience 1P provides on the Mac has convinced so many Mac users to choose 1P over the many compete, including Apple’s own baked in solution. You had two incredibly beneficial positive feedback loops going that came about because you had a native Mac app that felt like the best that a Mac could offer. It’s not perfect but I’d say 1P7 is easily in the top tier of Mac apps for UX. It’s a titan.
I’ve read the post on why you’ve decided to go to Electron. I understand that maintaining multiple discretely programmed products meant more time and money spent maintaining feature parity, and splitting your resources to maintain multiple platform code bases. However, I think your priorities are in the wrong place. I’ve never used 1P6 or 1P7 and ever thought “I wish this had more features”. And when you would announce new features, I always felt the release schedules allowed time for users to fully integrate those new features into their workflows. I can think of so many apps absolutely riddled with features, including password managers, where I only want or need about 20% of them. And of course I’m just one person and other people might want/need the 80% I don’t, but I would still argue that more features for the sake of more features isn’t a net positive for anyone. From the outside looking in, and from the point of view of a daily user of 1P for years, the feature rollouts being limited by the need to maintain multiple native apps meant that when you did implement features, they were all really good and useful additions that were well implemented.
But, like so many others, I wouldn’t care about Electron at all if Electron apps could convincingly be made to the standards of native MacOS apps. If you could pull that trick you really would be the best designers in the entire Mac ecosystem. And while I heard about the changes in advance of using the beta, I still went in with an open mind. After all, if 8 preserved the core experience and workflows I use daily in 7, I could live with the loss of some of the niceties, although I feel like I shouldn’t have to. However, from the moment I unlocked the beta, I knew this wasn’t it. For all the reasons many people have listed here already, this feels nothing like a Mac app. If you told me this was the new update of LastPass, I’d have said they’re doing a decent imitation of 1Password. Telling me this is the new 1Password makes me so sad and disappointed.
When you first announced your subscription model, there was pushback. One of your main messaging points was that subscriptions help fund further development. I think that messaging convinced a lot of people to pay more over the life of the software even though one time purchase options were still available. I made a conscious decision to become a subscriber because I wanted to help fund the best password manager in the world. And when I needed a family solution, I just jumped onto the family subscription. I didn’t even research the competition, because I was so certain I already had the best possible password manager, because it delighted me every time I used it. To know that my conscious decision to be a subscriber was used to make this…disappointing downgrade of an app feels like a bait and switch. And I get that you’ve taken VC money so you have other masters to appease now, but please don’t cut off your nose to spite your face here. Maybe you’ve done the calculus and determined that taking VC money to chase enterprise clients is a better long term strategy, and one where this unified code base makes total sense. If that is the case, then be honest and tell us that’s the direction you’re going. At least people will respect your honesty. But don’t think that you can ignore or downplay these concerns and still expect your most vocal supporters to remain your most vocal supporters. And at the end of day, as interesting as the Rust backend is, when it comes to the main points of password manager security, you’re at feature parity with Bitwarden. In fact, Bitwarden is a step up in that it’s open source and can be freely audited. And if all I can expect from a password manager going forward is a so-so experience, then it might as well be with a cheaper service that is open source.
The best companies make provisions for redo loops, where they take the time to ask themselves do they need to rethink a decision or change course. I’d say this is a major redo loop opportunity. Please use this beta to solicit meaningful feedback and not just bug reports. Give yourself the opportunity to continue delighting your customers and you can bet we will reward you with even more loyalty. I don’t want to leave 1Password but I absolutely will if this is the direction AgileBits is taking going forward.
P.S. I have to ask, why did you spend so much time on Swift? Surely Catalyst or App Kit would be able to give you the results you need on the front end, with less resource hogging and with the benefits of Apple native frameworks. I find it very odd that it was apparently a choice between Apple’s worst framework for Mac development or Electron.
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I also think Catalyst would have been a better call here. Build a world-class iPad app and then bring it to the Mac with Catalyst. The second-generation Catalyst apps from Apple (Maps, Messages and Podcasts) are basically impossible to tell apart from a standard Mac app. Catalyst was likely the right call here, and probably still is.
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Don't think this will change much, but I wanted to add my voice of disappointment here. I've tried 1Password 8, and despite all the hard work 1P team did, it doesn't feel native Mac app, and it doesn't behave like one.
And what is worse, resources consumption is higher with performance being worse. My MacBook is pretty old, and I have to run heavy apps like Xcode. So, for me, it's a pretty serious problem. I'm sure that I'm not alone hereI'm a long-time supporter of 1Password both as a user and as a reviewer promoting it in the Russian-speaking Apple community. And of course as a paying customer with the subscription. Let's be honest, $50 isn't cheap for the non "first world" countries, but it's the price that many people paid to get a premium NATIVE experience. After all, it's in the vein of classical Apple: for a higher price, you're getting a better experience.
Now it's totally gone. I don't want to follow these speculations about "1P team being sold for investor's money trading their most loyal users, etc.". Every product and every team can make their decisions, and switching to a crappy cross-platform solution that became a synonym of poor experience — can be one of them. Marked will decide how good this idea was.
But I'm totally frustrated that I'll have to switch to some other solution, that definitely will be inferior to the current 1Password 7, but will be working as a native app community wants.
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I gave it a try and... this is broken on so many levels that it's just beyond the imagination. Simply because you decided to use the Electron framework which is terrible compared to the native solutions. And you won't fix it because it can't be.
Beyond tens of reasons why it is a total failure, I will add a few too:
- Sluggish UI
- 1P Mini from a handy tool turned into a useless frustration
- the modals of setting up the new accounts and preferences are terrible. Clunky, jumping in case of errors in the fields, and oh... can't be moved or made bigger... You have to scroll within the modal within the app!
- even adding a new password through the login form on a website blocks the entire page!
And please stop fooling people that 1PW 8 is using only a bit more memory than version 7. It's using LOT more memory and LOT more threads.
Version 7 ~120MB and ~30 threads
Version 8 ~ 380MB and ~120 threads
Sadly, after advocating and using 1PW for many years our cooperation is coming to an end. Once you release this very poor application, and you will for sure as it's just too late to admit a wrong decision, I am canceling my subscription once I will figure where to go. I really loved 1Password.
You made a terrible choice.
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Put my money where my mouth is - no interest in continuing with an Electron based 1P app:
Your subscription was canceled
You can continue using your account until August 7, 2022 or subscribe at any time to keep your account active.0 -
For sure 1password became what we do not want for an expensive fee
suscription cancelled.
any alternative but apple keychain?
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1Password Team, please reconsider your decision. 1Password was one of THE apps for which people bought Macs. Old saying states that if something is universal, it's actually useless. Don't break one of the best apps for Macs just to make it universal across Apple/Windows platforms. If you need more resources to develop different versions, increase the subscription fee, but do not sacrifice Mac user experience.
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Excited to see all these speed enhancements from RUST in action that you all have been boasting about. 🤦
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This discussion was created from comments split from: Adding a new item from within Safari takes minutes to show up in 1Password app.0
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I've moved your comment to this thread, about our chosen tech stack for 1Password 8. Your comment is off-topic for this thread, which is a troubleshooting issue related to the 1Password notifier not connecting, and not relevant to our use of Rust/Electron. Please keep your comments relevant to the conversation ongoing in the thread.
Thanks.
Ben
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I really don't understand why 1P team is still fooling people with:
"Rust Core is great" without mentioning Electron is hell"18P has great performance" while so many reports, screenshots of heavy RAM usage and unreasonable thread count are posted here
"Give it a try, you'll love it" love what? Sluggish UI? Modal in modal? Heavy RAM usage? a dozen more threads?
Wrong decisions can be fixed, but wrong attitude can't.
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Sorry, but I agree with what everyone else has said - Electron is the wrong way to go. I'm highly disappointed. You have reduced your app to "just another web app" in order to "support more old macOS versions". Really? You don't support enough already? 1PW 7 is so bad that those on older machines can't use it anymore? After paying a premium for your product as a yearly subscription, it feels like you've cheaped out on us. You're even writing the iOS client natively, but not macOS. I'm stunned.
And with the rapid adoption of macOS in general when a new version comes out, what an opportunity to really make the best native app using SwiftUI. Let 1PW 7 take care of those who can't upgrade. New macOS 11 and updated SwiftUI, great to time to take the next step, and up your game. And if you had written a blog post that said "although many folks wanted to go the easy route and use Electron, we decided to maintain our macOS app as native, moving it forward with Apple' technologies and connecting to our fantastic new Rust backend." That would have been extra loyalty points. And since you are subscription based now, there is not the desperate push for people to upgrade - funding is already rolling in.
I pay a premium for macOS hardware and the excellent design of the human interface. If you're releasing your product free of charge, by all means save some money and use Electron. But not I'm paying premium money for use on my premium system for you to cheap out.
Honestly, since you've been in the Mac community for so long, I'm surprised you thought this would be acceptable. Either put the proper investment into the UI, or I will take my hard earned cash somewhere else. If you are unwilling to be loyal to the platform, don't expect customers to be loyal in return.
Sincerely I hope you rethink this decision, because I love the software. "Automatically install updates" now turned off.
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Nothing to add to this thread. I hope you reconsider and support at least a useful menubar app in native SwiftUI for modern Macs.
I am deeply concerned about the memory footprint and I consider to switch to another password manager for my company. But not yet, because I think there is still hope to correct the electron decision...
bests,
Samuel
CEO OtoJig0 -
"Automatically install updates" now turned off.
1Password 7 will not automatically update to 1Password 8.
Ben
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I was using 1Password for I don't know how many years. I have experience with Electron as a software engineer, I won't trust my passwords to that at all. Performance is ugly, memory leaks is a feature of electron it is not a bug, HTML interfaces are glitchy. And most importantly - security of electron apps is not the best side of it.
Meanwhile turned off updates and doing slow migration of MFA to new Keychain. Problem is that 1PW was more that just a password manager, notes, servers, documents... meh.
It's been a long way, it seems new Keychain is my new friend. I hope that you find that short "profit" with back pressure costs nothing. I am not even 100% sure what could replace all of the features...0 -
I just came to say that I didn't renew my subscription and I don't intend to come back until the app is native. Even if you guys prove to me that the framework is faster and better, which I doubt, I'll only use it again if it's native.
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Have I misread the 1Password 8: The Story So Far blogpost?
In there it says:Ultimately we decided for a two-prong approach. We would build two Mac apps. One written in SwiftUI that targeted the latest operating systems and another using web UI that allowed us to cover older OSes.
As far as I understand, this means, that 1Password 8 will not use Electron on macOS, as long as you are running at least MacOS Version 10.15. Is that correct?
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