Questions to AgileBits

Hi @claus

Thank you for caring so much about 1Password to take the time to participate here and share your thoughts. I'll do my best to respond in kind and answer your questions the best I can.

Why did AgileBits release the Alpha of v8 for Mac long time after the versions for Linux and Windows? Why not first? I assume they knew exactly that many users (and I guess Mac users are the majority) won't be happy with the changes. Now, ca. one month before the release of the final version (as scheduled in September) there is no chance to change some fundamental things. Just polishing here and there and bug fixing is possible ...

I wasn't involved in the decision making process here, but my impression is that the release order was largely driven by how much improvement v8 would provide to the platform. On Linux, all we had been able to offer up to v8 was the browser extension, and so having a desktop app at all was a 100% improvement. I don't think it is any big secret that our Windows app has historically (and currently, with v7) lagged behind what we've offered on Mac. We've tried for years to play catch up, but it never materialized to the level that we wanted to offer. And so Windows was the second priority. Mac already has a quite robust desktop 1Password app, which was hurting the least for v8. Also because 1Password 7 for Mac was already ahead of the pack in terms of features and polish we wanted to advance v8 as far as we could reasonably justify doing so before offering the Early Access.

And I want to be clear: we understand there is still a lot of polish to do and features to add. Fortunately one of the benefits of this new model is that those features can roll out much more quickly. We (generally) only have to wait for development to write features once, rather than 5 times.

Did you expect such negative feedback from our Mac users?
There are so many good, constructive, in-depth comments / is constructive feedback by so many users, analysing v8 from different points of views (GUI, technical, licensing, ...), but your reactions are "but fixing" or general statements - or the critics stays unanswered resp. rebounds.

It probably seems like our team is "huge" now, with over 400 total people working within the company, and as such I can see how one might assume we'd be able to quickly respond to all of the feedback we've received. Reality is that even with pulling in teams that don't normally have the responsibility of directly interacting with customers we're struggling to keep up with the volume. We absolutely are reading and tracking all of the feedback that we can. The unfortunate reality is that there are some messages we probably won't ever have the ability to respond to. We are really trying.

As for expectations vs reality... I can only speak for myself. I expected a fair bit of pushback about the changes surrounding licensing and standalone vaults, because those have been a part of 1Password for so long. Many of the customers who have been using 1Password the longest know and are accustom to that model. I knew there would be some reaction regarding our UI and our choice to use Electron specifically, but I didn't anticipate as much of a war against Electron as we've seen. We didn't see it to anywhere near this degree with Windows or Linux customers.

Whenever we have a new release there is an outpouring of feedback. There was a segment of incredibly vocal users who hated 1Password 7 for Mac when it came out. We evaluated all of the input we had at that time, weighed what changes were feasible and which were not, improved over time, and now we have the app that so many people absolutely love. One of the big things that we did after the 7.0 release was redesign mini... not once, but twice. I think, given the opportunity, the similar will happen here.

There will invariably be folks who are so upset over some of the foundational decisions we've made that they'll move on to something else. But there will also be folks who never would've considered 1Password before who will now as a result.

Why dont you use the hand-break NOW? Rethinking the whole changes? Omnigroup did this one because their "new" OmniFocus (released as a test version) got such bad feedback, so they took all the feedback from the users and developed a better version.

I've been a Mac user since 2006/2007 (I can't recall exactly). I've been using v8 full-time for the last few months. I can say with all honesty that I like it. I'd still like it if I didn't work here. Are there some rough edges that need to be smoothed out? Some missing features? Of course. Some of that will come before the stable release, and some of it will be an ongoing effort throughout the life of v8. But as a whole, and especially when considering our whole customer base, I think v8 is headed in a good direction.

No doubt there is a very vocal crowd here that is unhappy and disagrees. Whether there is enough of a push to make drastic changes... I don't know. As I say we're recording the feedback and it'll all be looked at.

In your answers/reactions I read only that you do more or less "bug fixing". But I see nothing like that you want to rethink some (fundamental) parts of v8. It is like written in stone.

Dave and Roustem tend to be very "nothing is written in stone" kinds of people. I truly believe they'll evaluate all of the feedback we receive from the Early Access and make a informed decisions. Whatever those decisions are, there will be people who will feel the decisions were the wrong ones. That's the nature of working on something people are so passionate about. I suppose I'd rather be in that situation than work for a company that releases an Early Access version and nobody says a peep.

Ben