Applauding Jason Snell

In a world full of people – bloggers, podcasters, youtubers, influencers – that don’t dare to take a stance, afraid of harming their commercial interests, I applaud Jason Snell.

Just read this column in MacWorld:

We need more Jason Snells.

:clap:

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Excellent and well written article.

Snell is right: it’s about the features. I could not care less if an app is built with Electron or whatever fancy framework Apple came up with in the last WWDC. But also, system integration (automation anyone?) and performance (speed, memory usage) is a feature.

I frankly think Agile Bits can pull a solid and deliver a great Electron app, even with their strong security requirements, but the multiplatform approach will cost them money. But there is the beauty of this: Agile Bits is not an “indie” company anymore, and other developers can try and occupy their niche as alternate secret managers.

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I do love 1Password’s much improved user experience. I’d keep subscribing for that alone. But I did notice that in all of their blog posts about their latest changes, 90% of the improvements they talked about seemed to be things that only the devs would care about.

Having said that, I doubt this will cost 1Password that much. Take all subscription or purchase losses and compare that to costs saved by shifting to cross-platform Electron. I’d bet it is at least a wash. Devs on forums and the blogosphere do not represent a substantial portion of Agile Bits customer base…

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Exactly Agile will be just fine. They made the decision that can carry their company forward.

I’m not ready to leave 1Password my sub is in December and I’ll keep it another year but i’d say my eye is wandering more now. We’ll see how I value having 1P across Mac, Windows and soon i’ll be running Linux at home. That may make me see the light.

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I doubt very many of 1password’s 15 million users will even be aware of the switch to electron, and only a fraction of those will care. AgileBits could have a problem if the app doesn’t work properly but historically they don’t release a new version until they are certain that its ready,

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Indeed, excellent article. Kudos to Jason Snell.

As someone who previously poo-pooed this, it dawned on me later that the switch to Electron made it possible for 1Password to become Linux-friendly. While I like my Mac (and my iPhone) very much and I have no interest in switching any time soon, knowing that the pain of switching, should I need to, might be lower in the future is something I applaud.

That noted, I still prefer my complement of os-native apps. 1P is sort of infrastructure in my world.

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