Couple of 1PW 8 for Mac comments

@rob

I think it's a bit of column A and column B. The macOS third-party ecosystem is largely turning to trash because developers find making cross-platform apps with web technologies to be easier. From a business perspective, I understand your decision. The Mac market is small and Apple presents a huge threat. But at the same time, it's frustrating to users when you present 1Password 8 as a huge upgrade where it is mostly a regression in terms of features, interface, and performance.

I think this is mostly a marketing/PR failure from your team. You did a bad job setting expectations, a bad job outlining the killer features Electron will allow, and then the worst sin is how defensive and argumentative you've got with your users.

If you had a good marketing person, they would have advised you to:

1. Be transparent and open about Electron, the design change, and why you made the decision from a technical and business standpoint. More users would empathize with this.

2. Then show us all the new amazing features this is going to allow. Not just allude to it, actually show the killer new features. If they aren't ready yet, there is no reason to release the app.

@KirkMcPike @FCNV

I think it is time we accept the fact that the ship of 1Password 8 has sailed. The weird choice of design and glaring inconsistencies will remain, as they are consistently being defended by the team. Even the close button on the top right of preferences menu. The responses mentioning why the team hasn't felt what we are feeling, are outright hilarious and deeply saddening.

There are companies that will do as much as possible for their users (Apple) at great costs to themselves (Privacy policy instead of ad revenue) --- a user oriented policy mingled with business. And those that will sacrifice anything in the name of soon to arrive features and apparent efficiency improvements to reduce the amount of work needed to maintain great apps --- a business oriented policy throwing in some individual users.

In order to move forward, changes are necessary. Sometimes disruptive changes. However, if all they bring are regressions in terms of features, performance and design and hopes of some ground breaking features, none of which are apparent right now, is the unveiling of a whole new system even worth it?

Regardless, every other major password manager has already gone down this path: Lastpass, Bitwarden, Dashlane(partially). I went through all of them and landed on 1Password for 2 reasons: (1) It was the best designed and most consistent app and (2) yes, 1Password was the most functional with the most useful features. Ironic.

Agreed on the point that there was probably design and feature parities among the different platforms. However, 1Password had been the go to password manager for Apple ecosystem. It felt like they were the unofficial collaborator of Apple who worked together to create the best damn security software for the ecosystem. To see them ditch that just changes everything.
And people wonder why Apple exercises such strict policies on the App Store. It's to prevent it from becoming Play Store.

1Password is now officially in that group of softwares whose name you search on the internet just to compare its price with the others and base all your decisions on that. They are no longer special in any way.

I don't hate 1Password or the team creating it. I know all too well how much effort it takes to develop an application like this. The simple fact that I'm spending the time to write this up in here, goes to show that I still do care. And I'll wait a year to see what features they bring in exchange for an app design that looks like some futuristic version of TETRIS. But I simply did not expect 1Password team members coming up and defending every single choice they have made. Not responding probably would have been a better way to go, under some circumstances.

Anyway, if 1Password thinks it's best to do what serves their needs and benefits their business, I think it's only fair that we do the same. Only a matter of time before Apple puts keychain on steroids. Until then, a few other placeholders come to mind that cost less and do the same thing.

The most unfortunate part? I just got to using 1Password 7 on my Mac and iPhone. 2 weeks later, there was 1Password 8. Some timing.

PS: I do not expect 1Password to change the whole design and its probably not needed either. But if they don't fix the inconsistencies, I won't be taking the pain that comes with using the app as it is today. You have 1 Year. I do hope you figure things out and win us back.

Yup…the ship has sailed and macOS users are just getting a "crappier than it has to be but easier for the developers to work on" application…even a Catalyst conversion of the native iOS/iPadOS app would be better than Electron and all the non macOS UI stuff it is implementing. Doesn't matter though…management has made their decision to go for enterprise customer growth and that means that less attention will be paid to making apps that work the best on each platform that they can. I can't fault them for that…and wonder how much of that corner office attitude for lack of a better term comes at the behest of the VC folk who recently invested in the company. Yes…1PW remains the majority owner rather than the VCs…but if the VC has 25% or 49% or whatever they still have a big say in corporate policy.

Frankly…I've been looking around and so far simply haven't found another solution that provides everything I want…local vault storage, local backup, DropBox for sync, Secure Notes, and image attachments. If I had found one I would be gone already…but there isn't a solution available that I found. So…as noted in one of the other threads on local vaults…I've examined my gripes and figured out what were show stoppers and what I would be willing but unhappy about it to live with…and the only complete deal breaker for me is local backup/restore/import so that I can have copies of my data, back them up to wherever I want for my security, and reimport them back into the cloud vault eventually. I personally think that separating the database encrypt and sync encrypt to two providers provides greater security than just using a single provider with 2 passwords (Master and Secret Key) does…but as a practical matter I'm not sure it really makes that much difference beyond personal thoughts and preference.

@neil_laubenthal 1P8 does provide an export feature. I don't know how complete export is though. In version 7 some things are not exported, but perhaps things have improved in version 8. Have you asked them about that?

@danco…one needs backup ups because there backups of my data…the only resident copy on the Mac is apparently in the SQLite database that is used for offline password lookup…and that’s not a backup at ll plus it’s not something 98% of the users can get anything out of. If a security related company doesn’t realize the mandatory nature of secure, user controlled backups of your data…then I’m flabbergasted at the lack of understanding that represents. Im happy and consider it a mandatory requirement for you to backup data on your servers…but that in no way provides the user a usable backup of their data.

@merrybit…The export is for moving data elsewhere…what is needed is a fully featured encrypted with the Master Password local backup of the complete dataset that users can clone or Time Machine to back their data up and the capability to create a new online vault and import that backup in the event of some catastrophic event on either the server end or the device end.

The one glaring change that I hate is the removal of the 1Password Mini in the menu bar and replacing it with a stupid search window. With the M1 Macs and the ability of being able to run iOS apps that require passwords and even macOS native apps, it was great to just click the the menu bar icon, select favorites and then copy and paste the password. Now it is type in enough letters to shorten the list to find the password info required. Also, the stupid search box doesn't even have the option to just open the 1Password app which was also handy. A step backward in my opinion.

Also, no longer any option in preferences to enable running 1Password on start.

Yet more. Gone is the listing of all the categories! Now if it is not in one on your "Favorites" list, you need to scroll down a list of everything instead of selecting selecting say "Credit Cards", "Documents", etc, and then choose what you are looking for!

In addition, running across multiple inconsistencies when using Safari and the 1Password extension when logging into websites that weren't there in 1Password7. I know that betas are going to be rough around the edges in some respects so I expect this to improve, I hope.

The major changes, like many others have pointed out, are a definite retrograde of a great app. In way too many ways this is looking like a version 1.0 beta back when the idea of a password manager was in its infancy.