Just want to add that these types of comparisons are most accurate, especially when considering periods longer than a year or two, if the historical costs are adjusted for inflation and the future costs are adjusted for the time value of money. In other words, under typical economic conditions, $70 from a decade ago is equivalent to a larger amount today while $48 from a future time is equivalent to a smaller amount today.
I experimented today with Passwords (my subscription to 1PW will expire in June). Easy to import passwords with a CSV file, but passkeys have to be reset on the websites where they are used. Firefox is my default browser, so I enabled the iCloud Passwords extension. So far so good.
But I also run a Linux machine, which has a working 1Password extension. The iCloud Passwords extension can be enabled in the Linux version of Firefox, but it does not work. So I used a CSV file again to import all my 1PW passwords into Firefox on the Mac, but did not enable Firefox’s passwords feature, keeping the iCloud Passwords extension in charge. Going to my Linux machine, I opened Firefox and let it sync the passwords, and enabled Firefox passwords in the security settings. This worked, but soon stopped as it downloaded the iCloud Passwords extension (via Firefox sync) and it put it in charge, uselessly. Back to the Mac and set Add-ons to not be synced. Now I can let the iCloud Passwords extension work on the Mac, and Firefox’s own password manager work on the Linux machine. The latter will have to be manually updated when new passwords are stored on the Mac, but the vast majority of those I use are now available on Linux.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that Apple is using vast resources to support legacy OS versions. Their update model is to provide security updates only for the prior 2 versions of the OS. No other fixes. And the prior 2 versions don’t get all the security updates that the current one does.
The situation that the prior poster asked for - “just fix 1P 6 to work on newer OS and sell it to us” is analogous to wanting Apple to support macOS Sequoia on hardware they’ll release next month. Not happening in either case.
And 1PW 6 will continue to work just fine as long as you run it on the OS releases it was supported on. Upgrade past that at your own risk. And in any case be prepared to live with any security problems that may be discovered if you decide to keep running it.
Hopefully, someone else will test it before you upgrade. Depending on what is changing in macOS, it may or may not break.
I’ve personally experienced something similar with Adobe Photoshop Elements and FileMaker Pro. The versions I’m running (PSE 2021 (v19) and FMP 19) are definitely not supported on my Mac (an M4 mini running macOS 15.7). But they work. PSE via Rosetta. FMP is Universal.
I’ll upgrade them when they stop working. But probably not before that.
Don’t confuse “unsupported” with “incompatible”.
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Looking at this from AgileBits’ side of things, how much did those years of providing free software updates cost them? That’s the side of the equation that pushes software vendors to subscriptions. I think they come to the conclusion that one-time software license purchases do not provide sufficient ongoing revenue for bug fixes (security and otherwise), maintenance (e.g. supporting new OS releases) and new features.
I worked for an enterprise software company that sold perpetual licenses, but there was no update entitlement unless you had a support contract. The support contract included the any major version upgrades that were released during the term of the maintenance contract - so in that case it looked like a subscription. Unlike subscriptions, the software didn’t stop working if you stopped the maintenance contract.
Agreed - and that’s where my “at your own risk” statement comes from. Guaranteeing that old software still works on new macOS releases is always a question mark that seems only to be answered by user experience.
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Wow…so much passion about a password manager!
I used 1Password for many years but switched to Bitwarden prior to Apple’s release of Passwords. I’ve had it installed it since its early releases (when it was free) on both my wife’s and my computers (my iMac, iPhone and her iPhone) and have been perfectly satisfied. I haven’t regretted the switch, and Bitwarden has continued to add features and refine its tools. Check it out.
I suspect you’re tracking the removal of Rosetta in macOS 28 given that PSE 2021 appars to be Intel-only…
Are you certain about that date? I was using 1PW6 and taking my time purchasing a perpetual license for 1PW7. When I finally got around to it the perpetual license was gone and it was subscription only. And this was long before 1PW8. I wish I could find the emails (and dates) of my conversations with AgileBits about this change.
Also, the perpetual license was a hidden option that took a bit of sleuthing to find.
So I am using 1PW6 on Sequoia because it still works…but am transitioning to Apple Passwords. I hope Apple adds more features in future versions.
When it goes away, I’ll have to upgrade. I’m not too concerned, because PSE isn’t very expensive, but Adobe no longer sells PSE with a perpetual license, so I’m going to put this off for as long as possible.
Adobe claims that Elements is not a subscription product, but only because there are no periodic payments after the initial purchase. But the license (and therefore the software) expires after 3 years. The fact that you can’t renew for any amount of money but are forced to buy the new version is actually worse than a subscription.
If Adobe doesn’t wise up by then, I may just decide to switch to something else. There are plenty of options. I primarily stick with PSE because it has great integration with my scanner software (SilverFast), allowing me to scan directly into an editor window without creating temporary files. But if they tick me off enough, I’ll change my workflow just to spite them.
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That’s my favorite model.
I’m happy to read this discussion (on the ever-valuable TidBITS Talk forum). Like several others, I’m running an ancient 1PV6 family license (perpetual) on my family’s cluster of 3 Macs, 2 phones, and an iPad… and I’m kind of holding my breath, waiting for an upgrade to break our time-worn setup. We still sync everything via Dropbox, just like the good old days, with no reliance on 1P’s cloud service. It’s all worked flawlessly – we’ve used 1P since V2 – and it still feels secure.
I’ve had my eye on Bitwarden for a couple of years and have begun been recommending it to friends and family who are still password manager holdouts. The primary concern that keeps me from converting to Bitwarden is its open source nature. While that would generally be a strong positive factor for me, with security on the line I have to wonder how easy it would be for a bad actor to infiltrate an open source project in order to compromise millions of users’ carefully-guarded data.
Your thoughts? (Am I unnecessarily worried? …or worried about the wrong things?) Thanks in advance for your considered opinions.
I am sticking with 1Password, for a few reasons:
One, I don’t trust Apple software with something so sensitive and important.
Two, if you do need help, Agile-Bits will be available to help directly. Try that approach with Apple. Three, as Adam points out, 1PW still provides more features than Apple’s Passwords, and finally, Apple offers too little, too late. Apple has lost the “race” for this market, in my opinion.
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And for today’s experiment, I am trying out Bitwarden. So far so good, on Mac, iPhone and Linux Mint.
Then there are those like myself where 1Pwd8 WON’T run on our Macs but STILL will not get any updates. Since the company has decided to reorient to business users, they seem to be depreciating those pesky individual users who ARE the basis for 1PassWord’s success.
I use BitWarden on my work machine. I think if I wasn’t invested in 1P, it is what I’d use at home too.
The price is reasonable: you get a lot of functionality for $0, and the extra features for $20/year or $48 for families.
My biggest gripe with Bitwarden is that they don’t have a central service running on the machine, so you need to sign in separately in each browser. Chrome updates? Sign in again. Firefox updates? Sign in again. Logged out or restarted? Sign in everywhere again. Maybe this is just me because I run multiple web browsers.
If that annoys you too, vote for https://community.bitwarden.com/t/shared-unlock-state-login-to-browser-extensions-when-logging-into-desktop-app-and-vice-versa/1635/1
I’ll stick with 1Password. You get what you pay for. I’ve been a happy customer since 2007. They have pretty good support, although it is email. I’ve been tempted to use Apple’s Passwords. But, I care not to have all of my eggs in one basket at this time.
Just to comment on Vaults, I did the export/import cycle to Bitwarden again and wanted to preserve my vaults as best as I could. (I’m going to decide pretty soon whether to stick with 1P or switch in a few weeks.)
Just as a tip, what I did was I tagged all of my items in each Vault with the name of the Vault in 1Password. So, for example, I am the chair of a non-profit organization called SLLT, and all of the passwords, secure notes, etc., that I use for that organization are in a Vault. I tagged each of those items “SLLT” (you just need to tag one, then select the rest and drag them to the tag in the sidebar, to do this quickly). I also have tags for “Default” and for a couple of organizations I also work with.
Then I exported the 1P data. When I imported into BitWarden, it created a folder for each of these tags, so all of my SLLT items are now in their own folder.
It’s nowhere near there same as a vault, but at least things are organized.
I’ll spend the day creating second passkeys for all of the sites that have passkeys stored in 1Password (by the way, that is a great feature of 1Password - you can get a quick listing of all of those logins. So far I can’t seem to search BitWarden for any passkeys already created.)
[edit: A bit of searching found that you can use the BitWarden command line interface to search for which entries have a passkey stored: Find passkeys stored in vault - Password Manager - Bitwarden Community Forums].
While that would generally be a strong positive factor for me, with security on the line I have to wonder how easy it would be for a bad actor to infiltrate an open source project in order to compromise millions of users’ carefully-guarded data.
More generally, I wonder about the security of the different password managers. Even if the people developing the software have the best intent, it’s really easy for subtle problems to make it into a product. When I last took a look at the various password managers awhile back, I noticed most had had very few security audits done by a third party (or at least published the info on their websites), and usually, they only audited one version of the software. AgileBits, to its credit, had audits done fairly regularly, and the company had tested both the Mac and Windows variants of 1Password (I don’t recall if they audited the Linux version).
You’re correct—1Passwword’s perpetual license disappeared in June 2021, before the release of 1Password 8.
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