[jl_agilebits]

I'm a feature developer for 1Password, and I want to clarify a few things. I've posted this already in another thread, but there seems to be some misinformation being spread that our technical decisions are being driven by VC funding.

Our decision to built the macOS app in Electron was absolutely not driven by VC money. For the past few years, we've been working on consolidating 1Password's business logic into a single Rust-powered core that could be shared across all our apps. This has many advantages: feature consistency across platforms, faster development cycles, and better security. When building the front-end for the desktop platforms that would take advantage of this new core, Electron suited us perfectly, since we could write our UI code once and make it consistent across Linux, Windows, and Mac. We actually did build a native Mac app initially alongside the cross-platform Electron app, but we eventually decided that having two separate versions of the macOS app (one in Electron, one in SwiftUI) would cause a lot of needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team.

I can understand your frustration about Electron, but I hope you find my explanation reasonable. Please stop spreading misinformation.

[vmladenov]

With respect, I disagree with your conclusion about a SwiftUI version causing hassle for customers. Every time I use an Electron app, I get the distinct feeling that its developers are prioritizing their experience over my own. We the users subsidize faster development cycles with wasted CPU and memory, laggy interfaces, and strange, non-native UX.

[the_lucifer]

> We the users subsidize faster development cycles with wasted CPU and memory, laggy interfaces, and strange, non-native UX.

I can absolutely attest to that with a relatively underpowered computer (4 gb of RAM). I can barely use 2 electron apps after which my computer grinds to a crawl (I’m running VSCode and Slack mostly). I have stopped using the discord desktop app and exclusively use the website now.

[jl_agilebits]

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.

[realityking]

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

[jl_agilebits]

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.

[psionides]

Or you could have just kept the existing AppKit version and update it to work with the Rust core?…

[evgen]

That Electron is an unpleasant experience and is a resource pig that makes Java look svelte? No, that is not misinformation.

That AgileBits has been doing everything it can to force people to the subscription model and that this push to subscriptions very coincidentally lines up with two rounds of VC investment for over $300M over the past couple of years? No, that is not misinformation.

It may have been easier for the dev team to use Electron as their cross-platform toolkit, it is not easier for the users to put up with the attendant bloat and reduced performance.

The ones who should stop spreading misinformation regarding the forced subscription all seem to be working for AgileBits.

[robbiep]

That’s reasonable logic but for me with a company subscription and previously having been an individual purchaser with my backup in iCloud rather than on 1 pass servers, it doesn’t really tilt the balance - I also hate electron with a passion and will be looking to stay on 7 for as long as possible with a high likelihood of shifting to a different provider due to the forced shift to cloud storage after this.

[mbirth]

Do Windows, macOS and Linux seem "consistent"?

There's a reason people prefer one over the others. You can't have one front-end for all these different platforms. Well, you can, but then it's a compromise for at least 2 out of these 3 platforms.

Even Microsoft has "Office 365 for Mac".

[johnatwork]

So you had the beautifully engineered experience of macOS to draw native user experiences from, and then you just threw it out because you wanted parity?

That doesn't make the macOS experience better, it makes it worse.