1Password

Jonathan S. Geller, on BGR:

According to our source, after many months of planning, Apple plans to deploy 1Password internally to all 123,000 employees. This includes not just employees in Cupertino, but extends all the way to retail, too. Furthermore, the company is said to have carved out a deal that includes family plans, giving up to 5 family members of each employee a free license for 1Password. With more and more emphasis on security in general, and especially at Apple, there are a number of reasons this deal makes sense. We’re told that 100 Apple employees will start using 1Password through this initiative starting this week, with the full 123,000+ users expected to be activated within the next one to two months.

I have been using 1Password for many years now and I hope the additional stress, under which AgileBits will now be, will not compromise the product. Since I use the standalone version of 1Password and sync via iCloud, there shouldn’t be any performance issues, but I am slightly worried about the future of the product. Luckily, it appears that there are no plans for an acquisition:

Rumours of my acquisition are completely false. My humans and I are happily independent and plan to remain so.

I do have a few questions though:

• Why doesn’t Apple just use iCloud Keychain?
• If iCloud Keychain is lacking in features, why don’t they add them?
• Is this a security issue? Should I trust 1Password more than iCloud Keychain?
• Since Apple wants to use 1Password instead of iCloud Keychain for its employees, I assume there’s a feature of 1Password that they desire to incorporate? But which one? Secure notes? Weak password warnings? 2FA support? Watchtower? The ability to store software licences?

This is all very strange.