1Password v8 is a Mistake

24

Comments

  • @ibuys You are right, we started as a Mac shop. The iPhone didn't even exist at the time. I still have the very first PowerBook purchased at the Yorkdale mall in Toronto. Our first blog was even called The Switcher's Blog.

    Dave and I built 1Password for ourselves but a lot of changes were driven by our users. I remember the time when I did not want to have 1Password for Windows but our customers convinced us to start working on it 😁 The 1Password for Linux request is one of the longest running threads on this forum. Today, it is hard to imagine any business (in fact, it is true for many families) that is only using a single operating system.

    Over time, 1Password became pretty popular and there are tens of millions of people using 1Password today. When we introduced 1Password for Business back in 2016, it turned out that the companies need 1Password as well. We were struggling with the demand for new features and support. We had to grow the company. It turned out to be a pretty challenging task on its own and something that we didn't know how to do. This is the main reason we partnered with Accel, not the financial side. You can read more about it in the Dave's post.

    Now, let's get back to 1Password for Mac. I use 1Password 8 for Mac every day since last year and there is no way I am going back to the old version. There are just too many things that we finally were able add and improve. There is still work remaining but even today it is a better app.

    I think a lot of people make the judgement without even trying it. Dave described the new version in the blog post but I wonder if we should make a video and show off the new features without asking people to download the app.

  • cryptochrome
    cryptochrome
    Community Member

    "I feel betrayed"... Jesus, the drama.

  • @claus I think you are onto something here when you said:

    I did not install it because v8 still in alpha. I just have to read some comments. I do not need to touch the hotplate just to learn that it is hot! If someone tells me not to touch the plate, then I don't touch it. I do not like the whole development we see now, so why should I give it a chance.

    I think there are many people in the same boat. We'll need to find a way to show how the app is better without asking you to download it in the first place.

  • ibuys
    ibuys
    Community Member

    @roustem Fair enough, and congratulations again on your success. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

  • crg9385
    crg9385
    Community Member
    edited August 2021

    @roustem I think what would go a long way to easing everyone's fears is a detailed writeup about 1Password's design philosophy with Electron on the Mac. The benefits / risks of going with Electron, what 1Password is doing to address areas that Electron is infamous for failing at, etc.

    If we see a clear vision of where you're going with the Electron that makes the Mac version look, feel, and performance on par or better than what we have with a true native app, that will likely go a long way in the discussion.

    Right now, all we know is you're moving to Electron and scattered bits on how you're addressing various issues via tweets and forum posts. So everyone (including myself) is falling back to the current truth: there has never been an Electron app that feels like a first class Mac app. With that truth, we are all afraid our user experience on the Mac (and iOS) is going to forever be compromised by this decision.

  • ibuys
    ibuys
    Community Member

    @cryptochrome

    "I feel betrayed"... Jesus, the drama.

    Odd, isn't it? How over time we grow accustomed, and even connected, to a piece of software. For those of us who make their living on a Mac these little apps are small bits of joy every time we use them. Especially when we've used them for years and years like 1Password. Over that time I've put all my passwords in it, my MFA codes, copies of my kids drivers licenses and SSN numbers. It's got my passport and all my software licenses. My SSH passphrase and several database details. Lots of stuff.

    I was honestly overjoyed when I realized how the 1P MFA worked, since I use that several times a day. Always brought a little smile. These days I'll take a bit of joy wherever I can find it.

    So, all that's to say, for the folks who ware genuinely upset at this, I understand. There's no denying that there's a psychological aspect to our relationship to our computers, doubly so in the Mac community. With everything going on in the world I imagine folks are being a little more harsh here (me included) than this actually deserves.

  • @crg9385 You are right. We need a write up and hopefully more. The team is working on it and we'll have more information soon.

    Earlier this year, Dave had a post about the 1Password core rewrite in the Linux post but it is missing the work that was done on the Mac side to make the experience native.

    As a developer, I use VS Code every day and it became my favourite text editor. I have Sublime, TextMate, SubEthaEdit installed but VS Code is the best editor today and it is based on Electron 🤷‍♂️

  • @ibuys Thank you for the kind words and thank you for supporting us over the years ❤️

  • @shepstl I can relate. We, Mac users, sometimes have a feeling of superiority when we talk about Windows and Linux. But these users deserve to have great apps. It is not fair to tell everyone to "just buy a Mac" 😇

  • blankspace
    blankspace
    Community Member

    I think a lot of these complaints could be solved on the mac if they just brought back the native mini menu app.

  • @shepstl There is a bit of a truth here. I think the business/enterprise side is important for us.

    You can see over that over the past few years every major vendor — Google, Apple, Microsoft have built their own password manager. Once something becomes essential, there will be a free option. Remember when Netscape used to sell the web browser and now it is something that we all expect to be free?

    If we want to survive, we have to provide something more. Support for businesses (and families!) is a big part of it.

    Now, both Dave and I are still using 1Password everyday. We are Mac users and we want to have the best experience for ourselves.

    We agonized over the Electron choice and how it will be received by the community. Yesterday wasn't easy and some of the feedback did hit our team pretty hard. I still think/hope we could pull it off and people will come around 🤞 I know I did — while there is still work that needs to be done, I can't imagine using the old app today.

  • @blankspace The Quick Access option is supposed to be the new mini. It is still in early development and needs more work though, we merged it into main branch just three days ago.

  • @shepstl I appreciate the feedback!

    I still think there is a lot of FUD that was built up over the years. I doubt we will be able to change that. I use VS Code over a few "native" text editors on my Mac. I also remember the "native" Hipchat app and it could never come close to Slack or Discord.

    And you are absolutely right that the perception and how people feel about the product matters.

  • blankspace
    blankspace
    Community Member
    edited August 2021

    I get that @roustem Ugh....

    Fine, I'll give you guys until release as I owe you guys that. However, you guys need to give the "quick access" option a lot of love.

    Please also let us define a specific vault since it's supposed to be all done by typing.

    Example

    • Activate via shortcut
    • Type {vault}:then the query
    • Example work:figma
    • the : or whatever key should automatically turn the {vault} into some sort of tag or something. Think of teams or something to give power user's a bone.

    I'd be happy with another option as well, this is just an example.

    Teams example.

    Please also look into the issue of activating quick access snaps you out of the current space. It's supposed to be a quick access menu. It shouldn't force me back to the space 1password is open in.

    https://cln.sh/UeLoVo

  • FCNV
    FCNV
    Community Member

    After reading the overwhelmingly poor feedback around 1Password 8 for the Mac, I decided to try it out myself with an open mind

    And it's as terrible as they said.

    So I send my feedback directly to Agilebits and received a form reply from somebody who has presumably been sending the same response all morning. They encouraged me to post here in the community so here I am. The app is bad. I have no ill-will against Electron, but it seems it is difficult to make a high-quality, performant app in it that feels like the OS it is on. 1Password 8 is slow and feels abstracted away from MacOS in a way that feels...I don't know...gross.

    @roustem I understand that Agilebits is a for-profit company, now with $100 million in funding, and has to find a way to grow and survive. But that does not spare you from legitimate criticism. Making a good app and growing are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd argue they are correlated. 1Password is a bad app. Not just because it is alpha/beta, but because you made poor design choices and the philosophical concept of it has changed.

    @roustem I also find it kind of disrespectful how defensive you have been in this thread, dismissing good feedback and taking a somewhat combative approach with paying users that are trying to help you. I understand your team worked hard on this, but the outcome is poor. You messed up. Now we'll see if Agilebits really cares about its users and feedback or not. The ball's in your court.

  • blankspace
    blankspace
    Community Member
    edited August 2021

    @FCNV I've been one of the most aggressive here, I'm going to stop you right there. roustem has been surprisingly open to criticism considering he's the founder and we're shitting on his product.

    He has a lot of work to make 1password better but attack the product, don't attack the developers. We aren't children here and as pissed off as I am about 1password. We aren't here to attack the employees personally.

  • @blankspace I agree about the Quick Access. It is very raw and the team wasn't sure we should even include in the first build.

    @FCNV Is this something I said? How can I make it better? I tried my best to not be defensive but if you think that way then I should probably take a break from the forums and Twitter, getting a bit tired and 6 hours of sleep is not enough at my age 👴

  • FCNV
    FCNV
    Community Member

    @roustem

    "I think a lot of people make the judgement without even trying it. Dave described the new version in the blog post but I wonder if we should make a video and show off the new features without asking people to download the app."

    Respectfully, I think you have your blinders on. Almost everything posted here, on Reddit and Twitter has been fairly critical of the knew app, but you are seeing that as an issue with perception rather than the product. And rather than fixing the product, you think it just needs to be better explained...like through a video?

    Not trying to be dramatic, but you're either stuck in an echo chamber or knowingly deceiving users. You're better than that.

  • @FCNV that's fair, thanks for pointing this out ❤️

    The point that was trying to make is that we should do better at showing our users why we love the new app and why they will love the new version as well.

  • FCNV
    FCNV
    Community Member

    @shepstl I'm going to stop you there. Nothing I said was disrespectful, childish, or untrue. I'm not attacking the developers. I know they are capable of making great apps. I know it hurts to work on something and then be told it is not good, but it is necessary to the process. I have been constructive in my posts and not looking to get into a forum war with you over it.

    @roustem As I mentioned earlier, it doesn't seem like you are being receptive to the feedback and the idea that perhaps this isn't a good app. Rather, it seems like you are trying to argue that we just need time to get used to it or that Agilebits has done a poor job positioning the new benefits of it. You bring up VS Code as an amazing example of an Electron app. While I don't personally agree, that also doesn't mean that 1Password 8 is of that same caliber yet. It just seems like you're looking for ways to make users like 1Password 8 more than you are looking to actually fix 1Password 8.

  • FCNV
    FCNV
    Community Member

    @roustem

    "The point that was trying to make is that we should do better at showing our users why we love the new app and why they will love the new version as well."

    See, this is what I mean. Your insistence that users "will love the new version as well" is completely detached from the feedback you are getting. This is not a better app for a lot of users. No number of blog posts and videos are going to fix that. You're going to have to make the app much better for them to love it. Again, this isn't a matter of positioning, this is a matter of quality. You first need to accept that 1Password isn't as good as you believe it is. If you don't respect the feedback, you don't respect your users.

    1Password built its loyal fellowship, and presence in the enterprise, from the bottom up. Power users that brought it to work and convinced their companies to invest in it. Now you are trying to build a product channel from the top down. I think if you do that with a bad app, those same users that went to bat for you in the enterprise will now take you down. Good luck with your strategy.

This discussion has been closed.