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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 anymor

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 honestly cared about users and their needs. But such is the nature of big business, it appears.

cpressland 5y ago
We’ve been a 1Password for Business customer for about 3 years. But we’re looking at moving to something like BitWarden because it has true SSO support, while 1Password doesn’t. 1Password has been very clear this is a feature they’re not interested in supporting, and our users have been very clear that remembering a second password and secret key for their password manager is too difficult. AgileBits is presenting itself as Enterprise friendly, but isn’t. It has its own vision on how the enterprise should work.
- simondotau 5y ago
  SSO for unlocking the password vault?
- lycopodiopsida 5y ago
  >But we’re looking at moving to something like BitWarden because it has true SSO support, while 1Password doesn’t. That is what I am curious about, too: starting the the v8 of 1Password I just can't justify paying premium for 1Password anymore as a mac user who has a family account. Both have Electron clients and cloud-only vaults, but Bitwarden subscription is 40USD/yr., and 1Password charges 60USD/yr. In my opinion 1PW just lost any advantage it had, at least for non-business users.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    That’s fair enough, but being Electron or not isn’t the only criteria to judge a UI. Personally after testing both (on Linux) I found 1Password’s UI to be better enough compared to Bitwarden to warrant the price difference.
simondotau 5y ago
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.
- doctoboggan 5y ago
  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?
  - simondotau 5y ago
    https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/11/macos-monterey-password-updates/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/11/macos-monterey-password... They've released a cross-platform Chrome extension, plus a native Windows client. No Firefox as far as I'm aware, sadly.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  If their Mac app has been sherlocked to death, why wouldn’t this make you feel more sympathy? Do you think Apple knew AgileBits was dropping their Mac version and stepped into the opening? Or did AgileBits step back once it became pointless to compete with an upcoming OS feature?
  - simondotau 5y ago
    These significant upgrades to iCloud Keychain are still in beta (macOS Monterey and iOS 15). If AgileBits' announcement represents their response to a competitor that hasn't even released yet, if it means they're diminishing their own product before the competition has even arrived, then I would have zero sympathy for them. Quite frankly that seems an absurd hypothesis. In the face of competition from Apple, the correct response by AgileBits should have been to double down on product quality and pushing feature depth.
simonh 5y ago
>We, macOS users, are just not the target audience anymore. I'm not entirely sure this is indicative of that, I mean what were they supposed to do? SwiftUI is clearly the right choice for iOS, but if they use it on Mac they would have to develop a separate implementation for older Macs, and anyway they hit problems where SwiftUI just flat out isn't mature enough on Mac anyway. The only other alternative would have been to rewrite the native client again in ObjC, knowing that they would have to rewrite it again in the near future anyway. All of these options suck really badly. I think it's just unfortunate timing given the current state of development of SwiftUI. do you really see a better pragmatic way forward? This way hopefully in future when older Macs cease being an issue, and SwiftUI on Mac matures, hopefully they will port the iOS code base to Mac. At least the fact they went with SwitfUI on iOS instead of a cross platform framework is a good sign.
- brutopia 5y ago
  Swift code runs on older macs so no need to go objc
  - simonh 5y ago
    SwiftUI only runs on MacOS 10.15 or later.
    - brutopia 5y ago
      Yeah but you can do appkit with swift without having to use objc
      - simonh 5y ago
        That's still a big chunk of new code you need to write only to throw it away a few years later. Even with just a handful of developers for a year or two that's still millions your throwing away, meanwhile you're developing this Electron thing for the Mac anyway so using that for a few years instead has zero cost.
aidos 5y ago
We use 1P for our business and honestly, I’m not sure how fit for purpose it is in the enterprise domain. We only have about 20 people using it and it’s a not that great from an admin perspective. Simple things like sharing a single password between teams mean you need to create a shared vault that both teams have access to and put the pw in there. Or you send a copy, but now you have 2 copies that aren’t linked. You can add files but they’re weirdly half linked to passwords, floating about without anyway to see which passwords they’re linked to. Sure, it’s not a file store, but you have to live with the crappy ui or use some other tooling for other metadata. When I last checked, there was no obvious way to audit which accounts had accessed a given pw. Or to see all the passwords that an account had accessed. Maybe people manage to make it work for them but as our company grows, I’m going to be pushing harder and harder to remove it from the organisation (and I’ve been using it since 2010).
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  You should give a try to bitwarden. I've been using Lastpass for, what, 10 years (met the founders at a conference/fair by then) and dumped it for bitwarden after having had a closer look. They are missing one thing which I have not seen elsewhere either: accounts where all saved creds automatically go into a shared vault.

cpressland 5y ago

We’ve been a 1Password for Business customer for about 3 years. But we’re looking at moving to something like BitWarden because it has true SSO support, while 1Password doesn’t. 1Password has been very clear this is a feature they’re not interested in supporting, and our users have been very clear that remembering a second password and secret key for their password manager is too difficult. AgileBits is presenting itself as Enterprise friendly, but isn’t. It has its own vision on how the enterprise should work.

simondotau 5y ago
SSO for unlocking the password vault?
lycopodiopsida 5y ago
>But we’re looking at moving to something like BitWarden because it has true SSO support, while 1Password doesn’t. That is what I am curious about, too: starting the the v8 of 1Password I just can't justify paying premium for 1Password anymore as a mac user who has a family account. Both have Electron clients and cloud-only vaults, but Bitwarden subscription is 40USD/yr., and 1Password charges 60USD/yr. In my opinion 1PW just lost any advantage it had, at least for non-business users.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  That’s fair enough, but being Electron or not isn’t the only criteria to judge a UI. Personally after testing both (on Linux) I found 1Password’s UI to be better enough compared to Bitwarden to warrant the price difference.

simondotau 5y ago

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.

doctoboggan 5y ago
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?
- simondotau 5y ago
  https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/11/macos-monterey-password-updates/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/11/macos-monterey-password... They've released a cross-platform Chrome extension, plus a native Windows client. No Firefox as far as I'm aware, sadly.
Kaibeezy 5y ago
If their Mac app has been sherlocked to death, why wouldn’t this make you feel more sympathy? Do you think Apple knew AgileBits was dropping their Mac version and stepped into the opening? Or did AgileBits step back once it became pointless to compete with an upcoming OS feature?
- simondotau 5y ago
  These significant upgrades to iCloud Keychain are still in beta (macOS Monterey and iOS 15). If AgileBits' announcement represents their response to a competitor that hasn't even released yet, if it means they're diminishing their own product before the competition has even arrived, then I would have zero sympathy for them. Quite frankly that seems an absurd hypothesis. In the face of competition from Apple, the correct response by AgileBits should have been to double down on product quality and pushing feature depth.

simonh 5y ago

>We, macOS users, are just not the target audience anymore. I'm not entirely sure this is indicative of that, I mean what were they supposed to do? SwiftUI is clearly the right choice for iOS, but if they use it on Mac they would have to develop a separate implementation for older Macs, and anyway they hit problems where SwiftUI just flat out isn't mature enough on Mac anyway. The only other alternative would have been to rewrite the native client again in ObjC, knowing that they would have to rewrite it again in the near future anyway. All of these options suck really badly. I think it's just unfortunate timing given the current state of development of SwiftUI. do you really see a better pragmatic way forward? This way hopefully in future when older Macs cease being an issue, and SwiftUI on Mac matures, hopefully they will port the iOS code base to Mac. At least the fact they went with SwitfUI on iOS instead of a cross platform framework is a good sign.

brutopia 5y ago
Swift code runs on older macs so no need to go objc
- simonh 5y ago
  SwiftUI only runs on MacOS 10.15 or later.
  - brutopia 5y ago
    Yeah but you can do appkit with swift without having to use objc
    - simonh 5y ago
      That's still a big chunk of new code you need to write only to throw it away a few years later. Even with just a handful of developers for a year or two that's still millions your throwing away, meanwhile you're developing this Electron thing for the Mac anyway so using that for a few years instead has zero cost.

aidos 5y ago

We use 1P for our business and honestly, I’m not sure how fit for purpose it is in the enterprise domain. We only have about 20 people using it and it’s a not that great from an admin perspective. Simple things like sharing a single password between teams mean you need to create a shared vault that both teams have access to and put the pw in there. Or you send a copy, but now you have 2 copies that aren’t linked. You can add files but they’re weirdly half linked to passwords, floating about without anyway to see which passwords they’re linked to. Sure, it’s not a file store, but you have to live with the crappy ui or use some other tooling for other metadata. When I last checked, there was no obvious way to audit which accounts had accessed a given pw. Or to see all the passwords that an account had accessed. Maybe people manage to make it work for them but as our company grows, I’m going to be pushing harder and harder to remove it from the organisation (and I’ve been using it since 2010).

BrandoElFollito 5y ago
You should give a try to bitwarden. I've been using Lastpass for, what, 10 years (met the founders at a conference/fair by then) and dumped it for bitwarden after having had a closer look. They are missing one thing which I have not seen elsewhere either: accounts where all saved creds automatically go into a shared vault.