Concerns About 1P 8 for Mac from a Web and Software Developer

roustem: I don’t generally have a problem with the choice of Electron, but I believe that it’s important to understand that your customers have in part chosen to use 1Password because it is a “Mac-assed Mac app”. I’ve been with you guys since version 1 and you were posting on the Switcher’s Blog, because I switched about the same time. You and I have probably met at TACOW meeting a few years back (I know I’ve met Dave). I also have family that I’ve put on my 1Password Family account (as soon as it was available and through several updates) because it makes so much sense, and they’re on everything except Linux.

Mac and iOS users tend to be more finicky, but in the end, everyone wants a program that works like what they know every other program is supposed to work like on their platform. It’s one of the reason that Swing failed so badly. Electron apps, without a lot of work, tend to work like Electron apps. Which is to say that they work like badly implemented Windows or Linux applications and it just shows up even worse on the Mac because nothing on the Mac works like that. Most people hate on Slack’s app because it’s lazy and is clearly very little different than a wrapped webpage. (I hate on Slack because they really don’t understand their customers’s needs and the Slack app reflects that perfectly.)

I believe that it is possible to make a Mac-assed Mac app with Electron, but it’s going to have to be something that you commit to. You can get almost all the way there by looking for things that make 1Password feel like a webpage, Slack, or even VSCode (which is the least Electron-feeling app that I use) and explicitly doing things differently on the Mac.

These to me, would include:

• Ensure there’s nothing glaringly obvious like the ⌘-Alt-C as found by jaysee_au.
• Stop making the main window work like a webpage. This has multiple parts, but for me it still comes back to the zoom controls. In Mac apps, ⌘- and ⌘+ don’t change the size of the chrome , but instead change the size of the content. When things that look like chrome resize, it breaks your expectations. Music doesn’t work that way. Safari doesn’t work that way. The size of chrome is controlled by system settings. Some Mac-assed Mac apps do have a sort of “spacing” setting so that you can have a “compact” view, but zoom should only affect content.
• On most Mac apps, there’s no such thing as a modal. Preferences, etc. pop up as separate windows so that you can change them, possibly see interactive changes to how the preferences affect the main window, etc. They don’t get in the way of your use of the application. (Preferences sometimes have modal sheets that pop up. See Safari and what happens when you look at all cookies in the privacy tab.) Sometimes preferences are control sheets instead. I have found four “modals” so far that active get in the way of using 1Password:
  • preferences
  • add a new device
  • sign in to a new account
  • manage collections

None of these should be blocking to the use of 1Password, and as such should either be separate draggable windows (most Mac-like), sheets (second most Mac-like), or tabs (least Mac like, but at least non-blocking).

• Fix the biometry prompts so that they come up immediately on display launch without launching the full application, when required.
• Make sure that almost all actions that can be done can also be done through the menu and that the important ones have keyboard shortcuts (Lock — which I believe used to be ⌘⌥L does not have a shortcut and it’s hidden in a menu in the vault/collection list—the what?); the menus are really empty compared to previous versions of 1Password.
• Don’t have menus that aren’t obviously menus. I’m speaking of the menu items below the list of accounts / collections:

• Make sure that everything that should be chrome is properly recognized as such by Accessibility mechanisms. Make sure that it handles all of the settings at least as well as the native versions did. I can’t give as much guidance on this, as I do not currently require accessibility adjustments, but your comment on liking the zoom controls points me to this, as there are ways built into MacOS to improve overall accessibility without relying on Stupid Web View Tricks. This is one of the biggest points of being a Mac-assed Mac App, and something that 1Password has done very well in the past that I do not believe Electron apps do very well…if at all.

• Allow manual reorganization of the main grouping mechanisms. This isn’t as much about being Mac-assed, but it represents a fairly big structural change for me. My work account (starts with K) is sorted before my personal account (starts with z). This does not represent my interpretation of what’s important. In fact, I should be able to designate a collection as the first thing (the so-called “all accounts” view). With 1Password 7, I could unselect a number of vaults and ensure that results for them never showed up in Mini or searches unless I was in that vault. I have vaults to which I have access on my family account that I do not want showing up for results unless I select them (my parents’ vault; my wife’s vault). BTW, the last few years of 1Password 7 have taught me that ⌘0 is the “filtered all vaults” view, not “reset zoom level to default (too large)”.

As I said, I get why you’re moving to Electron. I don’t even think it’s necessarily a bad idea. But 1Password, as a multi-year recipient of Apple Design Awards, has a much higher bar to pass than the lazy management at Slack. There are a lot of people who will look at the fact that, as it stands, 1Password 8 doesn’t feel like a Mac app and decide that, as long as they are having to use something that feels like it doesn’t fit, why not go with something that doesn’t have the premium cost that 1Password has? At the moment, I’m not in that camp. But I could see myself moving that way when it comes time for 1Password 9. Right now, you have a great reputation as advocates for the Mac and deep security that also works on other platforms (not necessarily in that order). This isn’t something to spend cheaply.