1Password v8 is a Mistake

It’s been a super painful day for me because I love this company but to just cheer on this bad decision is a form of co-dependency. Like someone said, I don’t need to eat Modern Mud to know that I don’t like mud.

But because I really do care, I did eat some mud and tried this thing out. Spent a lot of energy on posts, tweets and conversations.

Here is one example: The About Box

Who cares? I care. Because I like things to work consistently. So in 1Password 8, as shipped, after a year’s work (or more?) imagine me doing this support for a relative I’ve convinced to use 1Password (there are many) and are now having issues with 8:

“Ok let’s see why version you have, under 1Password menu, choose About 1Password”
“Ok it says 8.2.345”
“Ok great, press command-w to close the about box”
“Ok. Did that”
“Ok select your login”
“What login? They all went away”
“They what? What app is named in the upper left corner next to the Apple menu”
“Finder”
“What????”

1. Non-standard About Box
2. Non standard preferences
3. Non-standard handling of command-W

That’s the level of native support we are at. Because of a design decision, which was driven by being cross platform.

Oh and I left out that the about menu opens the preferences which are a fake window living on top of the 1Password window with a “X” web style close box in the upper right corner.

That’s just one of the issues. Default key shortcuts missing for dialogs, regression of existing features, etc all add up to a signal from the company that it’s firmly headed towards Enterprise first (if not there already) and what’s next? Selling the company to Big Corp?

1Password is more than an app. It’s my entire digital life that I entrusted with AgileBits. Now that trust I gave them to do the right thing is in question, by my standards admittedly. Call it dramatic, insult all you want, this is a deep question of trust in decision making related to the most important data I am in possession of.

To call this the best release ever is a really confusing message to me. Is this the best release, or a maybe kinda will be some day it’s only beta after all release? Sends a weird message about what was touted as the most loved password manager in the world, which is somehow now no longer all that great compared to this incomplete, regression laden beta of version 8.

It’s also really confusing to see you diss your own product that was world class yesterday and today “And don't get me started about the sidebar or item editing in 1Password 7.”