1Password 6 - Release Schedule

bnipper

This is more of a suggestion than a question, but I'm not really sure that an e-mail would be the best option so hopefully using this public forum won't cause to much grief.

First, thanks for 1Password and the new subscription model. I'm happy to have the option and understand that it's a new business model which I believe means that the 1Password team can pay the bills and stay in business for a long time which I'm happy about. :)

I understand the need to re-write the windows client from the ground up with version 6. Based on the UI and the behavior I'm guessing you had to switch to the UWP app model or something along those lines. I'm a .NET developer and appreciate that the Windows OS has made it clear that is "the future".

I also get the need to NOT provide a public road-map due to the nature of the SDLC process and the need to be agile means changes are not always predictable or can be easily established in terms of a timeline.

All that being said, some sort of regular indication of a release schedule would be appreciated. Something along the lines of, a new version with some number of changes will be released, monthly or quarterly or even just, we plan to release the next version in 7-8 weeks. Anything would be helpful while waiting for the latest Windows desktop client to get better.

Also, I'd rather get small features pushed out more regular than have to wait months for a "big release" that has a lot of stuff in it.

Right now the desktop client is very much a beta (thanks for using that term the right way), but with the term beta I would expect it to change more often and that doesn't appear to be happening, or at least I don't know if it's going to happen soon since there is no release date for the next version.

Thanks for all the hard work and this is not a criticism, just a suggestion. :)

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1Password Version: 6.0.186d
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Windows 10.0.14393
Sync Type: 1Password Families - agilebits sync
Referrer: forum-search:1Password 6

dteare

Thank you for the wonderfully kind post, @bnipper. I really appreciate it.

I agree completely, it would be nice to have more regular updates on our progress. I try my best to walk the very tight line between sharing too much information on unfinished releases and not sharing anything. Both extremes are fraught with peril.

When we launched 1Password Teams I didn't want Windows users to feel ignored and left in the dark so I publicly promised that 1Password for Windows would be available 3 months later. Well, it's been 3 months and 4 days and I'm paying the price now for being overly optimistic there. It turns out Parkinson's law is totally a thing :)

I will be having an update on things once I have more visibility. I could take a guess now and make a new promise, but without better visibility, I think that would be a mistake. We're not that far off, but it is far enough to be frustrating for both us and our customers.

Regarding betas and where all the updates are, you're totally right – there should be a heck of a lot more updates coming out. They should be daily at this stage in the schedule. The issue is a large change to the database layer late in the schedule. It's frustrating and I hate to make it sound like I'm pointing fingers, so please don't read it that way, but a key database technology we wanted to use was simply nonfunctional early in our development cycle so we wrote our own. Ours worked but it had enough limitations that we wanted to replace once the issues with the system library were resolved. That ended up happening and we made the tough decision to pay off this technical now instead of later.

We've been stuck getting these database layer changes implemented and stabilized over the last few weeks and that's caused the update train to stall. We are close to completing this phase and I suspect there will be a period of unintended consequences that we'll need to work through. Once we're through that period I'll feel a lot more confident in giving a more concrete update. Likely on the blog, maybe in my newsletter, perhaps both.

Anyway, thanks again for the wonderful questions and kindness. Take care and enjoy the rest of your weekend :)

bnipper

I would assume that just because one person (such as myself) says something doesn't create a new release schedule; however, it feels pretty cool that since this post occurred I've noticed several updates to the Windows Client for 1Password. Again I'm sure it's all a coincidence, but still it's great to see all the changes going in. To the devs working on the client, please know that there is another developer out there who uses your stuff and is happy you are getting the chance to build great software. 8-)

MikeT

Hi @bnipper,

We've passed it on to our dev team that've just shipped another update a few minutes ago and they're enjoying all the great feedback coming in, thank you.

We still have a lot of work ahead of us but we should not see another lull like the massive upgrade we had to do for the 197d update that saw over 100 changes hitting multiple subsystems at the same time. From now on, we should be back to our normal small-focused type of release schedule rather than the bigger upgrades we did in the past.