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Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

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Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#31

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jayflux wrote: post #29
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #22

One of the more important features of 1Password, to me, is its cross-platform nature. Being able to use it on an iPhone, Mac, Android device, or Windows box, is beyond valuable. It’s a huge selling point. So I am not that concerned about them using a hybrid app. The biggest concern that I have, is that the poster child for Electron apps is Slack; which I consider to be … non-optimal. I dread firing up my Slack client…

I thought VSCode has been the poster child for Electron apps for years now. No one cites Slack as a good example for an app

Good point. VSCode isn’t bad.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#32

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24

I still don't understand what people's hate for electron is. As someone who uses Windows, Linux and on occasion a mac it generally means you get a fairly consistent experience across all platforms and often it also means the linux version doesn't actually suck or you actually get linux support in the first place. Which is always a big plus for me. Also I feel like the performance is decent at this point. For a fully…

>As someone who uses Windows, Linux

Yeah, your tolerance for inconsistent UX is much higher than longtime macOS users.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#33

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Sebb767 wrote: post #25
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native will always give the richest user experience, and deliver the most up-to-date tech. That said, most applications are really windows onto server-based algorithms, so the need for a “pure native” UX is a lot less, these days, than it used to be. The one big skunk at the hybrid picnic is that we are “dancing with a gorilla.” That means that we don’t get to change the step, or stop, until the gorilla says so. If w…

> Native will always give the richest user experience, and deliver the most up-to-date tech. No. It could , but when there's only one developer working on that app for three platforms and they prioritize Windows, you gain nothing. Native will, of course, be a bit faster and have more features, but for that you need to have a dedicated developer that knows the specialities and can make use of them. But if you want to…

> when there's only one developer working on that app for three platforms and they prioritize Windows, you gain nothing.

Which is why hybrid is so popular. It’s not a good idea, generally, to have one developer, working native, on all platforms. You need a team. A fairly expensive team.

I ran a team that provided “engine” code (C++) for native apps (on a couple of platforms) for decades.

I’m fairly familiar with the trade-offs.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#34

Post by matjazdrolc »

For some products wide platform support may be more valuable than what simple metrics show.

Why? Core utilities such as file sharing and password management simply need to work all my devices. If I have to use one password manager on Mac and another on Linux, there is no point in having a password manager. It gets even more absurd with file sharing. Should I use iCloud on Mac, and OneDrive on Windows, and Samba for the Linux machine? Absolutely not! Dropbox is the clear winner as it supports all three platforms. I'm an Office 365 customer, and yet I have no use for OneDrive, since there is no reliable first-party Linux client. After getting burnt with a flaky third-party OneDrive Linux client I decided to fork over money for Dropbox.

For products like Dropbox or KeePass wide platform support has wider impact than number of computers connected from that platform. In an organization with 3 people on Linux and everyone else on Windows, support for both platforms is a strong differentiator over competing products.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#35

Post by tomduncalf »

gorbypark wrote: post #17
tomduncalf wrote: post #5

I’ll be interested to see how React Native on desktop progresses. The developer productivity and consistency gains of working on one codebase rather than 2 or 3 cannot be argued with, and I’m confident more and more software will be moving in this direction regardless of the opinion of (what is probably) a fairly small number of hardcore users. However, I do agree that Electron can give a sub-optimal experience compa…

React Native on Windows and macOS works decently well these days. The macOS port is lagging behind the Windows one, but only by one major version. There are still some third party modules that don’t work on the desktop ports, but the support is getting better by the day. I have one small app in production that supports Android/iOS/Windows/macOS and web, all in one code base. Definitely a game changer, especially with…

Nice. I will have to give it another try. One thing that was a blocker for me at the time was no react-native-svg on Mac for rendering custom UI widgets. Doesn’t look like this has been resolved yet but that was quite a specific use case I had.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#36

Post by Dah00n »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #32
Barrin92 wrote: post #24

I still don't understand what people's hate for electron is. As someone who uses Windows, Linux and on occasion a mac it generally means you get a fairly consistent experience across all platforms and often it also means the linux version doesn't actually suck or you actually get linux support in the first place. Which is always a big plus for me. Also I feel like the performance is decent at this point. For a fully…

>As someone who uses Windows, Linux Yeah, your tolerance for inconsistent UX is much higher than longtime macOS users.

Mac has lots and lots of inconsistencies too. Some apps, like Music.app, is also pretty much an Apple version of electron. The inconsistencies aren't better on Mac, just different ones.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#38

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

sofixa wrote: post #26
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native will always give the richest user experience, and deliver the most up-to-date tech. That said, most applications are really windows onto server-based algorithms, so the need for a “pure native” UX is a lot less, these days, than it used to be. The one big skunk at the hybrid picnic is that we are “dancing with a gorilla.” That means that we don’t get to change the step, or stop, until the gorilla says so. If w…

> Native will always give the richest user experience, and deliver the most up-to-date tech. Really? Hoping your user has updated their OS to ger the latest version of the toolkit/SDK/etc. to be able to "deliver the most up-to-date tech" vs being completely dependent on tooling you fully control ( framework, Chromium/Electron version, etc.). I forget the name of Apple's latest UI kit, but it doesn't work on macOS ver…

It’s always a trade-off; regardless of the infrastructure that we choose.

The #1 imperative, is that the app must work on the current shipping OS. It doesn’t have to be “studly,” but it needs to work, and work well. On Mac and iOS, that’s a lot more important than on Android/Windows.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#39

Post by numair »

This is an incredibly dumb move that ensures I'll be uninstalling 1Password and moving my business elsewhere. 1Password is one of the only "resident" apps that I've allowed to run persistently on my machine, specifically because it's written in native code. If I wanted something using a non-optimized web container, I wouldn't bother paying the native app premium for 1Password.

And no, this isn't because it's "too difficult" or whatever people want to parrot here. It's because creepy VCs like Accel have pumped tons of money into 1Password, and want to keep the expenses low, and thus the margins high, and thus the earnings as high as possible, so they can eventually float the company at a nosebleed P/E ration on those severely trimmed expenses and hyper-engineered earnings. Great for everyone except the customer, as always. The "enterprise customer" is as annoyed about this as anyone else.

Thankfully, we still live in a free market, so... Yeah, have fun trying to get renewal dollars from me while optimizing for your experience over mine, Agilebits.

Re: Not important enough: 1Password abandons its native Mac app

#40

Post by doctoboggan »

simondotau wrote: post #23
lycopodiopsida wrote: post #13

Arguably, Agilebits just focuses more on enterprise customers now. The interesting thing about enterprise users is that you don’t care that much about UX anymore. Your users have no choice and software is bought by management based on some metrics and marketing demos. We, macOS users, are just not the target audience anymore. I would argue, that the current company is only a shell of the former Agilebits, which hones…

When Apple announced their significant upgrades to iCloud Keychain a few months ago, I immediately thought that it was unfair "Sherlocking" of 1Password. AgileBits had been out there offering a first class macOS/iOS password manager experience for a long time and it seemed rude of Apple to step on their turf so blatantly. I still have sympathy for AgileBits, but these feelings have diminished somewhat now.

What upgrades are you referring to? I’m looking to migrate from 1Password but maybe keychain will be good enough.

Does it work with other browsers on the Mac?

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