1Password v8 is a Mistake

@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 /14-years-of-growth-the-1password-story-fbbf58ebe28b">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.

@roustem there's a lot of people trying it and posting the issues that every electron app has, you guys just ignore those posts and don't respond (or respond with a canned, but it's so much faster in this little scenario that you have to exactly follow, see here!).

Electron is a bad choice for mac users. You know this, otherwise you all wouldn't be trying so hard to downplay (or even hide at the beginning) that it was built using electron.

I'm also so glad that you are quick to ruin the mac user's experience in order to open up that lucrative linux market. After all, "this is the year of desktop linux."

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

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

@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.

@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.

@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" 😇