Delay 1Password 8 release at least 6 months
Look, I've come to terms that Electron is your future and that there will be a new non-Mac-inspired design language. I disagree with most of your reasoning, but whatever. Regardless of those two things, the reality is that 1Password 8 sucks even for a beta app.
So I'm not asking you to rewrite the entire thing in SwiftUI. I'm not asking you to change your preference pane or make your contextual menus match the OS's. I'm not asking for one-time pricing, alternative sync options, or standalone vaults. All I'm asking is for you to make sure this thing isn't janky.
I propose a new "self-imposed" deadline where you don't ship this app until March 2022 at the very earliest. Please spend this time:
- Adding back in missing features, which have been well-documented here.
- Restoring more granular functionality, even if it is through a larger preference center.
- Polishing the GUI so that there aren't disproportionally large white spaces or certain lists are now inefficiently large or those weird blue lines between sections.
- Optimize the living hell out of this thing so that it's not devouring RAM and 50+ threads.
- Figure out a way to make this feel less Electrony. Resizing or redrawing windows needs to be smooth, no matter what front-end you use. Go as deep as you possibly can to squeeze every last drop of performance out of this technology so it doesn't feel like loading a webpage.
- Develop a way so that your cross-platform app can still inherit some conventions of each OS. Even if it's small things like the overscroll bounce or the wrong password shake on Mac.
- Focus on making this thing feel more snappy and more reliable.
- I think accessibility regressed. It's not easy to change the size of different screen elements and the focus/active state of windows does not match the OS.
- FIX EVERY SINGLE BUG. Rather than say "Oh, I just tried this out and can't replicate it," go deep on every suggestion to assure you have tested every use-case.
The bottom line is that regardless of what technologies or design styles you chose, this thing needs to FEEL way better. That has always been the point of differentiation for 1Password over LastPass, Dashlane, or BitWarden. If it feels sloppy like those apps do, what's the point? I think you need to spend the next 6 months going as deep as possible to refine this into something your team can actually feel proud to ship.
1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Comments
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I think the comment about the feel totally nails it. In my opinion, the app visually looks pretty good, and at the very least I think it is a visual improvement over 7. Is it perfect? No, but few things are and the UI can always be tweaked. In any case, I certainly prefer the look of 8 already.
The issue I have stem from the feel of the app, especially for the small things. And historically, nailing the small interactions is what makes a Mac app feel like a Mac app. When the feel is continually off, whether it be dropdowns, scrolling, no blur behind headers, resizing, etc, it compounds and produces a perception that this app just doesn't belong.
I want to be clear that my criticism comes because I care about the app and I've enjoyed using it (apparently you can enjoy using a password manager :) ) for a very long time. Other than v7, which I also felt was somewhat of a regression, it has generally seemed like 1Password was pushing boundaries of Mac app design and what a password manager could be. I get that may not be a focus anymore, but I think not focusing on the feel of the app is a slippery slope that will eventually lead to it feeling no better than Bitwarden.
I believe from what I've seen so far that even as an Electron app it has potential to feel like a first class citizen with some more work and polish. I'm glad it sounds like that work is going to be put in. A lot of my worry stemmed from the idea that this was close to final and being released in a matter of weeks.
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I just hate that when I try to auto-fill something in Safari it either doesn't work, is slow to work, or takes multiple attempts to get it to work. And then 1Password is like, hey, this is fine, we have $100 million.
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