Obsidian wasn’t okay for me when I tried it and I’m already on my way out of 1Password.
Good question. I‘m okay with obsidian but I think that has something to do with expectations. We had native 1Password apps and now the decision is made not with the user experience in mind as priority (besides security) anymore.
It’s a regression. Would not be so if it was an electron app at first, like Bitwarden or obsidian.
Besides that expectation thing…
I never tried the electron version of 1P. My subscription goes till 2022. So maybe it is sufficient for my use cases, very likely it will be.
But the magic and a little bit of trust in the customer relationship is gone.
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I use Obsidian for a few particular use cases, but the fact that it’s not a native app and isn’t a good platform citizen on Mac or iOS is what keeps it from being my daily driver notes app (I use Noteplan for that).
I second @karlnyhus, I never got used to Obsidian being an Electron app (note Evernote for that matter) and will probably have a hard time with 1Password becoming an Electron app - mostly gut feeling I assume?
No. I am not using Obsidian. The only Electron Apps I use, to my knowledge are Slack and Discord. Both are terrible but I don’t have much of an option.
I don’t know that I’m actually in a position to contribute…
… Not technically but when I seek permission from my employer to participate there has to be a certain amount of motivation for them to let me. Nothing heavy - but consider I’m already signed off for 6 projects.
I see two distinct issues with Electron:
- Memory bloat - which is probably common to all platforms using it.
- Mac UI.
We’ve complained about both.
If we consider cross-platform apps - extending to Windows and Linux - inevitable we probably ought to work on both aspects. (EDIT: I don’t know if the Electron architecture allows for separating the UI and any underlying engine.)
(I’m astonished at how much memory modern apps need - and I can’t tell if this is wasted memory perhaps caused by huge piles of objects or genuinely large amounts of raw data. But then a customer of mine has a CICS transaction that’s 400MB in size and I wonder what on earth IT is doing.) 
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Can someone explain the animosity towards 1Password in this thread? I don’t have time to read the whole thread. What is the problem exactly? asked sincerely and kindly
I think people complain about 3 different things:
- Only subscriptions going forward
- No more local/Dropbox/iCloud vaults (1Password.com cloud only)
- Native macOS v7 App replaced by Electron V8 App
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Something worth reading:
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Good article, definitely worth reading.
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I just read it and I agree.
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I saw that last night, and although I really enjoy Allison’s work, I thought that particular take was pretty condescending and dismissive of the alternative view. I’m also very surprised she didn’t seem to catch (or maybe just didn’t care about) some of the jarring UI abnormalities, such as the redraw issues, or how menu drop downs are cut off by the edge of the app (because the app is only a web view). I’m not going to say she’s wrong for not caring about those sorts of things (we all have different priorities in apps), but to borderline mock those for whom those things are important was unfortunate.
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My subscription just renewed, so I am committed to 1P for the ride. I have two points that are tempering my concern:
-
Per six colors/ Snell - Electrons’ biggest downstroke for me is the lack of automation - especially with shortcuts now coming to MacOS. After years on 1P, I have never needed to create an automation. I am wondering if others have?
-
I use the family subscription with gusto. We have shared vaults of all permutations. 1P was my “classroom” to teach my kids online safety. That function keeps me more in the ecosystem.
As a counterpoint, I use Obsidian, and need to duct-tape automation to the MD files directly and using Rube-Goldberg workflows with Drafts. If a native alternative comes - I will switch.
For some (including me), the disappearance of local vaults is a big deal. And it’s not just memory use. See also the Energy tab in Activity Monitor which seems to reflect how daintily an app will sip from the battery in my M1 MacBook Air.
A while back I responded to the “What is “ugly” software?” post by saying “If it works well and saves me time it’s beautiful.” So I got the impression the author doesn’t worry much about the UI.
And the “Abandonment Issues” photograph was a bit much, but it perfectly reflected my opinion of many of the users I supported over the years. I just never said it out loud.
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Absolutely! This is the end for local 1PW vaults. I would have expected to see it happening even two years ago. I think, AgileBits’ direction for 1PW was clear when they announced their server model for their vaults. I did not expect them to keep on supporting local vaults forever. I totally get, why that is a definite pain point, especially if you are a heavy 1PW user… 
I am in a different boat, I love the server-side solution. Syncing local vaults had been a pain, especially at work. I always got it to work, but it was quite a task.
What I like about Allison Sheridan’s post is that she really did go deep into the topic and she provides facts and food for thought. To be honest, I miss both in a lot of articles (or should I say link-bait?) on this particular topic.
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Thanks for sharing this, I really enjoyed the take. The author did a good job explaining pros/cons of Electron, while also discussing that 1Password 8 has room for improvement (hence the point of it being in beta).
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I’m not enthralled with how Obsidian works on Mac and iOS as a non-native app but it may be worth the compromise.
I much prefer Craft but there is a BIG issue with exporting from Craft. When one creates a note and then adds multiple sub-pages/cards to that note in Craft and then exports them, Craft merges all of the sub-pages/cards into a single file. This is not what I want.
One of the advantages of an app like Obsidian is that I can manipulate all of the files with any app of my choosing. This cannot be done with apps like Craft (and I assume Noteplan?).
Given these issues, I’ve found myself increasingly gravitating to Obsidian even though I’ve been running Craft and Obsidian in parallel as I assess which is best for my workflow.
I’m of two minds about the article. Felt many of her points were legitimate (although she does mention using 64 GB of RAM on a MacBook Pro, which may not necessarily correspond to what a typical user has) but the “you’re-all-crying-kids-bitching-about-your-parents-moving-out-of-your-childhood-house” thing was over the top. Plus, whoever responded in the comments didn’t cover himself/herself with glory regarding one of the key points of concern:
I’m not sure what a local vault is, Karl. Is it one that doesn’t sync to their cloud service? And if you don’t mind my asking, what would be the use case for that?
If that person was the writer of this article and doesn’t even know what a local vault is… Jeez.
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