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Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

zdnet.com

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Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#571

Post by jackson1442 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #483

I wonder if the biggest side benefit to a player like Apple getting into this game is the pressure it puts on web site developers to follow some kind of convention with their login forms. The vast majority of the time I have trouble filling a password, it's because the web developer did some wacky shit with the fields that make them unrecognizable, or in the worst case actively prevent pasting a password. It's one th…

I doubt this will change anything in the space. iOS and macOS (through Safari) has offered password management for years at this point. This is just a more flexible version of that system.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#572

Post by sleepybrett »

bdzr wrote: post #492
troad wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been fighting switching to the SaaS version I felt that way on principle for a long time, but honestly, on reflection, 1P is probably subscription that is most justifiable. I want to outsource online security to people that know what they are doing. I want that to be a viable business for a long time into the future. And I want their funding model to be such that their interests are aligned with those of the…

> People can get so irrational when it comes to the cost of software. The same person who'd pay hundreds of dollars for a cleaner, or a gym membership, will swear up and down that 70 bucks a year for an online bodyguard is highway robbery. Often while refusing to work for less than six figures as a SWE, hating on companies for seeking VC funding, dismissing non open-source approaches, and then complaining why there a…

I'm not sure a password database is a 'online bodyguard'. I am sure that 1password has been going downhill for a few years now. Getting rid of the ability for me to manage my own vault was the last straw for me. I'm still limping along with 1password7 with a local vault for my 'important/sensitive' passwords but i let keychain manage most of my randomass website passwords. Since I'm primarily in the apple ecosystem this works out for me, I do have some linux in my life too, but since I generally access those linux resources using a mac it's just not much of a problem.

I think this new interface to the password feature in macos will probably put even more of a dent into 1password/bitwarden/etc's consumer business driving them even further into catering to enterprise, it's a pitty, but 'this isn't a product, this a feature'.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#573

Post by jperkin »

mym1990 wrote: post #556
rootusrootus wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest worry about passwords by Apple is that I have even less pull when they screw it up. Not that I have a lot of input in 1Password, of course, but I bet if I get loud enough on HN for long enough, I could get the attention of the CEO. Try that with Apple. As a long time user (sufferer) of Screen Time, I am acutely aware of how badly Apple can screw up software, and how long they can let it go unfixed. Tim Coo…

Can you expand more on the Screen Time issue?

For me it's completely unfit for purpose:

* It's incompatible with some apps, e.g. Roblox, that are full-screened, and you end up in an annoying loop between the Roblox screen and the request more time screen fighting with each other, with no ability to click anything. My kid has learned how to hit the Option-Command-Escape shortcut to force-kill Roblox using just the keyboard and restart.

* Sometimes Screen Time requests come via Notifications (yay), and sometimes they come via Messages (boo). There doesn't appear to be any logic behind which.

* When they come in via Messages, and I leave Messages.app running for too long, it ends up eating all of the memory on my 32GB M1 Max and forcing me to restart the system.

* Sometimes requests do not come through at all.

* Sometimes the user cannot request more time. Clicking the button does nothing.

* Sometimes multiple requests come through for the same app. Approving one of the requests does not satisfy all of them, you have to approve all of them.

* Requests for websites do not work. Every so often Roblox breaks and results in having to re-download the .dmg. You end up in a loop between approving the request for more time and the website saying the user needs to request more time. I ended up writing a shell script to curl it instead (which requires munging User-Agent because the Roblox download page does not have a direct link to the dmg).

It's clear there are no Apple employees who actually use Screen Time to manage kids time. I can only assume they just let their kids have unlimited access, because trying to actually use Screen Time is absolutely infuriating, and only gets worse over time (e.g. the Notifications vs Messages thing is a recent regression).

It's also worth pointing out that I have absolutely zero issues with Android Family Link. It all Just Works for similar purposes.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#574

Post by josephcsible »

pasc1878 wrote: post #504
josephcsible wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great reason to not use Apple's, but Mozilla's doesn't lock you in at all.

Yes Mozilla's does - to Firefox. There are cases I need to use Safari or a Chrome based browser. This is the main reason I got 1password in the first place. and where do you store your passwords for apps?

That's not lock-in, though, since Mozilla makes it very easy to export your saved passwords to a .csv file if you ever do want to switch ecosystems.

I use KeePassXC to store passwords for apps.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#575

Post by sircastor »

We're BitWarden users in our house. We switched from LastPass after they double the price for the 2nd year in a row. We each have our own accounts, and then a shared organization.

If it were just me, I'd be tempted to just switch everything over. My wife is smart, and technically competent, but isn't interested in switching to new things until the pain points are too much. If I want to move to a new app or a new service, it can't be on a whim of mine, and it can't just be because I want to see what the new features are like.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#576

Post by sleepybrett »

stouset wrote: post #248
dylan604 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire assumption that I'm a freeloader is absolute bullshit. I've bought and paid for my copies of 1Password and have even purchased it for others. You can take that freeloader name calling and shove it right back in the place you found it. I'm quite frankly tired of it. We can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it. I also do not need their cloud and only features. T…

> We can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it. No, the last twenty years has show us that we can't. If you want developers to perform ongoing work on their products, you need to accept a model where there's ongoing pay for that work.

They had a model that was ongoing pay for their work. 1password was healthy and happy providing flat fees for major version updates, which were every couple of years. Then some VCs wanted to see more profit so suddenly it's all online, subscription, drop the native clients, and a pivot to enterprise. It got enshittified.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#577

Post by sircastor »

smsm42 wrote: post #25
nullindividual wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is available across the two major desktop operating systems, but you'd have to read the article to find that out. > The Passwords app is free to download, available across iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and MacOS 15, and will also work with the Vision Pro and Windows computers, says Apple.

No Linux or Android, which makes it useless for anybody having any devices running those. And since nobody wants to use two password managers, it remains a better solution to use a truly multi-platform one.

The Android one puzzles me a bit. We were Android + Mac for a very long time, more than a decade. I've switched to iOS over the last few years, but my wife remains a dedicated Android user. I don't really want to switch from BitWarden, but if I did Passwords would be a non-starter for us because of this.

I suppose that Apple really considers the iPhone to be the center of its customer's lives, with a Mac or Windows computer... rather than my view, of my computer being the center and my phone tertiary.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#578

Post by amlib »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #520
amlib wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't get why pay for a password manager when there is a free one from a trustworthy entity, Mozilla Firefox, that works on android, windows, linux, iOS and MacOS.

The answer is: features. People who pay for a consumer product usually get some added value with it that you cannot find in freeware.

But what features are unique to the payed ones? The Firefox one already checks if your accounts was found on a leak, it has the complete set of feature you would expect to "CRUD" your passwords, integrates with the virtual keyboards in iOS and Android so it's easy to fill login forms on any app and by virtue of being part of the browser has perfect integration with the browser, autogenerates random passwords for you and finally it syncs all your passwords across all your devices (plus all the other things that firefox sync syncs). And again, works on all relevant platforms no exceptions.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#579

Post by afavour »

Normally I’m conflicted when a big tech company comes to stomp on a market of smaller app makers but the password manager industry has left me with little sympathy.

Years ago I bought 1Password via a one off payment and set it up to sync via my iCloud Drive. It all worked great. Then they took VC investment and quickly every new feature was locked behind a subscription gate. I switched to Bitwarden. Then they took VC investment and I’m sure will end up down the same path (and you could never use a third party storage service with BW AFAIK). A password manager’s remote storage doesn’t need to be anything other than a safely encrypted SQLite file, you ought to be able to save it anywhere.

I think everyone should have a good password manager in 2024 and non tech inclined folks shouldn’t have to battle with upsells and spammy notifications as a price for being secure. If that means they’re using Apple’s offering, so be it.

Re: Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024

#580

Post by sleepybrett »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #222
dylan604 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire assumption that I'm a freeloader is absolute bullshit. I've bought and paid for my copies of 1Password and have even purchased it for others. You can take that freeloader name calling and shove it right back in the place you found it. I'm quite frankly tired of it. We can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it. I also do not need their cloud and only features. T…

> assumption that I'm a freeloader Where did I or OP say this? > can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it It’s a bad financial model. > intentionally removed the local vaults This is a valid disagreement.

Subscriptions may be a 'good financial model' for the business, but are rarely a good financial model for the consumer.

If I am required to pay you monthly for a product there becomes less and less reason for the owner of said product to improve the product. With the hassle that comes with switching password managers (even for myself, I provide three families with this product (my parents, my sisters family)) there is a lot of friction involved with leaving a product that is stagnant that I am paying monthly for.

I was much happier with 1password when i was able to evaluate their new major version, see if any features of it were compelling to me and my extended family and make a decision wether or not it was worth the asking price. Generally speaking a major version wouldn't get huge changes over it's lifetime, maybe some bugfixes, maybe some ui improvements around it's new features (could also be considered bugfixes), any security issues that cropped up. At that point their development staff was more focused on brand new features for the next major version.

I think what we ran into, partially, with 1password is them running out of ideas for their next major version. A password manager, to a consumer, is not a super complicated product that requires a bunch features, a lot of the work is in the encryption and security which isn't really consumer facing.

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