1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults • Hacker News Board

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#631

Post by drcongo » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

jl_agilebits wrote: post #411

neon_electro wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, long-time user, customer, and word-of-mouth recommender of 1Password for the nine years my Hacker News account has been active (give or take a few months). This is a big announcement that I'll have to chew on to understand what this means. Can you quantify the "needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team" in some way? Presumably, 1Password 7 and its ancestors used native macOS AP…

> Can you quantify the "needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team" in some way? Sure, happy to elaborate on that! Since we were rebuilding our app from the ground up, it was a significant slow-down on development to create a user interface for both Electron and SwiftUI, requiring two separate teams of platform developers for every feature we needed to implement. There were also con…

This is such nonsense that I can't let it go unremarked. I can count on the fingers of zero hands the number of times 1Password has shipped a "new feature" between major releases. There are no new features needed, it's a password manager. However, I would need to borrow some extra hands to count the number of features you've removed, features that loyal paying customers of many years depend on. 1P7 doesn't even let you keyboard navigate to the Generate Password button for goodness sake - something that I was able to do in every version up to that point.

Absolutely nothing about any decision AgileBits has made in the last 4 years has had anything to do with what customers (that's us, the people that used to give you money) want, and everything to do with nickle and diming the suckers dry.

UI consistency between different operating systems is NOT a user-focussed feature. When I'm on a Mac, I want my apps to behave like a Mac app. When I'm on Linux, I want my apps to behave like a Linux app. If you _actually_ believed that all apps should look and behave the same on any OS, why does the Android version look and behave nothing like the Mac app?

You've removed features with every major release, and this is just smashing the final nail into 1Password's coffin. You've ruined what used to be the best password manager on any platform.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#632

Post by jl_agilebits » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

realityking wrote: post #612

jl_agilebits wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for letting me know your concerns. Just to clarify: when I said that a SwiftUI version would cause hassle for customers, I was referring to how releasing two separate versions of our app - one in Electron, and one in SwiftUI - would be confusing for non-technical users. I should have phrased that better, my bad.

But why release the Electron App for Mac at all if you have a perfectly good Swift UI-based Mac app?

Sorry for the confusion. With 1Password 8, we re-built the entire app from the ground up. We didn't have a working SwiftUI solution that we could just pick up and use - we had to re-architect the entire frontend from the ground up. So when we made the decision to stop working on the SwiftUI app, it was far from being complete.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#633

Post by _dot__dot_ » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

As far as I am concerned, this is a `bait and switch` tactic. It is unethical. And it is a surefire way to shoot oneself in the corporate foot and destroy customer trust.

Nobody who values security enough to use a password manager would leave their passwords at the mercy of the next corporate turnabout, when said corporation is evidently untrustworthy.

This is the same lizard-brain self-interest unleavened by any shred of higher brain functions that people like Shkreli exhibit: `the suckers have switching costs so let's jack up the price obscenely while reducing the actual customer benefits.` Some people should be kept away from MBA programs.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#634

Post by prepend » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

beefjerkins wrote: post #402

slg wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like that notorious HN comment about it being trivially easy to roll your own Dropbox. Our time has value. Good UI has value. How much time is saved by just using a service like 1Password versus the design, setup, maintenance, and ongoing use of a system like you suggest with all those individual pieces?

I was just thinking the exact same thing. For technical and especially non-technical folk, getting a full nextcloud host set up and working is going to take significantly more time than a simple login into 1Password, where it just works.

Dropbox, OneDrive, icloud, and others have a free tier that is completely sufficient for a password vault.

Their client used to support this and they stopped. Because their current way makes them more money.

Their old client was super easy for non-technical users and groups (just enter Dropbox credentials, etc).

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#635

Post by prepend » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

nacho_weekend wrote: post #268

prepend wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $4.99/month for 5 people is affordable. I’m glad you find it affordable but these nickle and dime things add up. Especially when the product fits into $0 software so $4.99 is infinitely higher than $0. I feel like these small, “affordable,” services are just whittling away the Unix philosophy of do one small thing well. Layering on unnecessary crap just to charge a fee eventually comes home to roost. Also, password…

Personally, the added foolproof security and ease of sharing with non-tech savvy family makes that cost more than worth it for me personally.

Again, I’m glad it works for you and others.

I think about sustainability quite a bit and if everyone who needs password management spends what you’re comfortable spending, that’s a waste I think. And when tech stops making things cheaper and faster it’s a bit sad.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#636

Post by prepend » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #528

prepend wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $4.99/month for 5 people is affordable. I’m glad you find it affordable but these nickle and dime things add up. Especially when the product fits into $0 software so $4.99 is infinitely higher than $0. I feel like these small, “affordable,” services are just whittling away the Unix philosophy of do one small thing well. Layering on unnecessary crap just to charge a fee eventually comes home to roost. Also, password…

So how was your trip to Tahiti?

Well, I’m saving $5/month so I’ll tell you in a few decades.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#637

Post by leokennis » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #168

FreezerburnV wrote: post #50

I guess I’m the outlier in being very happy with 1Password and fine with paying for the subscription service. Not only is 1Password the best password manager I’ve used, but it makes it seamless to share stuff with my wife. I don’t care if 8 is an Electron app either, considering I usually interact with it via the browser anyway with their extension. (Also I know that the majority of what they wrote for it is Rust and…

I'm perfectly happy with paying a subscription, and think $4.99/month for 5 people is affordable. What I'm not happy with is the possibility of password access being limited or sync breaking if 1Password servers go down. At least with Dropbox (iCloud, wifi) sync, I have full control over the local vault file. Ultimately, it might be mostly about ownership and choice for me.

When you have a 1Password.com subscription, you are not "working in the cloud" like with Google Docs or something.

Your vault is local, and synced to/from the cloud.

Basically just like Dropbox. If your internet is down and you cannot reach Dropbox, all files synced to your computer are still there, on your computer. It's just that any changes you make locally or changes made on dropbox.com cannot be synced until your connection is back.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#638

Post by _dot__dot_ » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

jl_agilebits wrote: post #320

bgentry wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Electron suited us perfectly, since we could write our UI code once and make it consistent across Linux, Windows, and Mac. This is the source of your mistake. Users don't desire to have the same UI across different OS environments, it's only an app's developers that care about that. Cross-platform UIs are inarguably a worse user experience than UIs tailored to the conventions and designs of each OS. A Mac app that d…

> Users don't desire to have the same UI across different OS environments, it's only an app's developers that care about that. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I personally enjoy having consistent user interfaces across the apps that I use, and there are many other people that would say the same, so I would avoid making broad assumptions. From our perspective, consistent user interfaces are a win-win…

> I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Let's be clear about this: you are the seller, we are the customer. You can't `agree to disagree` with your customers.

If you don't agree to what some your customers are telling you, then they won't be your customers, and you won't lose just these customers but also all the others who observe your behavior. It is a modified case of repeated prisoner's dilemma. If I observe that you tend to defect on other instances, I will less inclination to cooperate. In other words, your reputation will suffer.

On the consistent user interfaces, the consistency of an app with other apps on the same platform is much more important than the consistency of that app across platforms. Even if you use multiple platforms, you switch much more frequently between apps on the same platform than between different instances of one app across platforms.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#639

Post by _dot__dot_ » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

jl_agilebits wrote: post #285

craigc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a sensitive product is exactly where this does NOT make sense. No matter how good their security is with their cloud version it will still be less secure than having a vault locally on your disk. That is a fact. Subscription services to me are only justified if they are providing a SERVICE which they are with the web version and ability to sync through their own servers, however, using a local version with y…

Hi, I work for 1Password. I can understand your frustration that we're phasing out local vaults. Luckily, I have some good news: we're currently running a survey to gauge user interest in self-hosting options. If you're interested, go to https://survey.1password.com/self-host/ and let us know your thoughts. Thanks!

Self-hosting is not a viable alternative to a vault kept on Dropbox, unless that is what you mean by self-hosting.

Re: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults

#640

Post by _dot__dot_ » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #110

I've been a happy user for over a decade (with a little break in there when I relied on iCloud Keychain), and happily transitioned to the subscription model when it came out. Frankly, it just made more sense - I use it on a ton of different devices, and buying a standalone version for each one cost more than the sub does. I'm also not worried about the Mac app moving to electron - I interact with 1password via my mob…

> I'm also not worried about the Mac app moving to electron - I interact with 1password via my mobile or browser plugin 99% of the time anyway, so I just don't really care.

The main 'customer benefit` claim for the electron switch (as opposed to the 'developer benefit') they are pushing is 'consistent UI across platforms` so your view exemplifies that, at best, there is really no customer benefit to the switch.