Comments on: 1Password is not for me: Doesn’t work with third-party applications

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:21:52 +0000

Sorry, Ms Gahran. I referred to you incorrectly as “he” in my post. My apologies.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:20:08 +0000

I disagree with the criticism of the author that he was basically “saying 1P is not perfect, therefore it is no good.” Being able to efficiently paste a password into a 3rdParty app is not a stretch. It is an oversight that the Cmd-C behavior only copies the record, and there is no shortcut to copy the password. Browsers are only a part of the landscape when it comes to passwords. 1P handles browsers well. Is there room for improvement, sure, but it does do a good job there. That it can’t do an average job supporting 3rdParty apps is a disappointment. Like the author, 1P is not for me.

By: BradH

BradH — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 18:50:04 +0000

Thanks for writing this article. It’s helped me decide whether I should get 1password or not. I’ve been searching for information about the differences between Keychain Access (i.e. the Mac OS X default) and 1Password, but it hasn’t been easy to find neutral comparisons. For the benefit of anyone else who might be trying to compare 1Password and the Mac default, here’s what I’ve found:

Features that both the Mac default and 1Password have:

-Saves and Autofills passwords
-Encrypts your information
-Can be locked manually or automatically to secure your information
-Can store bank information/other important information

Advantages of 1Password:

-Autofills credit card information
-Allows for multiple “Identities” when filling out personal information
-Advertises that it integrates with more websites than the default (I haven’t verified this)
-iPhone integration (only works internally with the 1Password app, though it does sync your 1Password passwords from your Mac)

Advantages of the Mac default:

-Non-browser application support (as mentioned in the article)
-Integration with MobileMe

Whether or not the $40-$70 spent on 1Password is worth it is based entirely on your preferences. Keep in mind that both utilities will perform adequately (when used properly) to protect your information from hackers and from identity theft if someone steals your Mac.

By: Nunuv Yurbiz

Nunuv Yurbiz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:19:10 +0000

Yeah, I’m not sure the author’s criticisms make any sense. Basically, the author is saying that 1P is not perfect, that it does not solve all problems (related to passwords), so therefore it’s no good. That doesn’t make sense to me. It’s better than the built-in keychain, which has its own limitations.

The question then becomes is it worth the price. I’m currently using the 3.0 beta. 1P really needs to be able to better handle multi-page logins (ID on one page, password on the other). And those stupid questions that some sites make you answer if, say, you login from an unrecognized IP address. The questions are stupid because it’s the same questions on just about every site! Arrrgh. Now everyone knows the name of my first pet, where I was born, the make of my first car, my favorite teacher (seriously?), etc., etc. Forget marketing questionnaires, which no one will answer, just require the info as part of “security.”

By: David A Teare

David A Teare — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:36:47 +0000

Thanks for the post! While I’m not happy to hear 1Password did not meet your expectations, I’m thankful you took the time to explain why so we can try to improve.

Unfortunately, the main two items you identified are not something we can do much about as we are not allowed to. Let me explain.

First, the OS X Keychain is an OS X system service that all applications have access to. It would be very difficult for us to remove this service and replace it with our own. While I do see the usefulness of this approach, it would be incredibly fragile and likely break a lot more things then it fixes. Interestingly enough, we used to store our data in the OS X Keychain (using our own keychain separate from the login keychain), and it worked well, but we found for our purposes we needed to develop our own solution. This is not to say the OS X Keychain is bad, but rather it did not fit the needs of 1Password. For example, the OS X Keychain was designed to store 1 or 2 items per application, whereas 1Password needed to store thousands of items. Because our needs were so vastly different, we found many of the design choices made by the OS X Keychain team did not fit our needs so we designed our own.

With that said, the OS X Keychain is still a secure place to store your account passwords (assuming your login password is strong) so you shouldn’t fear using it. You can allow applications like Twhirl and Tweetdeck to store your generated password into the OS X Keychain, and also keep the password in 1Password as a Wallet item or Secure Note. The benefit here is if you ever reset your login keychain, or setup a brand new machine and don’t want to migrate your old keychain, you will have access to the passwords.

As for the iPhone, there are a different set of limitations that we need to abide by. Sadly we are not allowed to extend the Mobile Safari application on iPhone; if we did we would be kicked out of the App Store for violating Apple’s terms of service. If we could, we certainly would have added the 1P icon to Mobile Safari just like we do on Mac.

Since we are not allowed to change Safari, what we do instead is to allow you to browse your sites inside the 1Password application itself. Simply find your Login, click on the URL, and we open up a browser (inside 1Password) to log you into the site. We actually use the same WebKit browser that Safari uses.

Anyway, I just wanted to shed some light on the issues you reported and why we elected to do things the way we did.

Thank you for trying 1Password and I hope your friends who recommended 1Password to you help me change your mind

Cheers!

–Dave Teare
Co-author of 1Password