Family Licenses and Syncing

TonyK
TonyK
Community Member
edited December 2012 in 1Password 3 – 7 for Mac
UPDATE: Know about File Sync. That is not simple or straight forward for most people. WiFi sync was very easy to use and secure. It is sad it was removed. Have info about MAS and how to use it like current Family License. May go ahead and get it this weekend to get a better upgrade price. :D

I have build 3.8.20. Just purchased 1Password 4 for iOS and it is a PITA to sync it and 1Password3. Looked for an update but my copy of 1Password, family license, says there are no updates though the AppStore indicates there is.

Can existing users get upgrade discounts? What is a simple way, without using Dropbox, to sync between OS X and iOS? My aversion to Dropbox is a security concern and before we dive in to a complete thread about Dropbox, I am not interested in using Dropbox for storing my 1Password keychain.

Thanks,

Comments

  • TonyK
    TonyK
    Community Member
    edited December 2012
    UPDATE: Have details on MAS from various other posts. I know about File Sync in iTunes but that is a PITB to use and could cause issues. Thanks,

    MAS does not have the family license either. The bundle on the website is for Mac and Windows and I DO NOT need a Windows version.

    Having 2 different versions in 2 different locations is very confusing to customers and users. Where possible, and I am speaking now as a software configuration manager, version numbers needs to be in sync to reduce confusion and issues.

    Right now I am having an heck of a time syncing my data from OS X to the new iOS v4 and that is causing me no end of issues. No direct syncing with existing 1Password V3 is a big issue. It should have been kept until 1Password 4 for OS X was out at which time a patch release could remove the WiFi syncing. Actually I would prefer to maintain WiFi syncing instead of having to use the file transfer in to iTunes, then import in the imported keychain.

    While I realize 1Password has grown from its original OS X base, the removal of existing features should not be undertaken without considering the full implications when the product family does not support all the new features. As SCM and a web developer for a major player in the real estate market I am aware of maintaining existing functionality while pushing new features. It can be a pain yet the customers, who pay us, expect it for seamless use.

    Keep this in mind please when considering removing existing functionality.
  • Chris100
    Chris100
    Community Member
    From t
    TonyK wrote:

    MAS does not have the family license either. The bundle on the website is for Mac and Windows and I DO NOT need a Windows version.

    You don't need a family license for MAS because Apple already lets you install MAS purchases on multiple computers.

    AgileBits describes this on the FAQ in this forum:

    Mac App Store licensing works very similar to iTunes licensing. Purchases are tied to your Apple ID. You can install 1Password on all of the computers you personally own and have tied to your Apple ID. To do so, launch the Mac App Store and select the "Purchased" tab at the top. Then you can select the "Install" button next to 1Password.
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2012
    There is no such thing as a Family License on the Mac App Store as it is not necessary. Simply install your copy on all your personal Macs. :)

    You are correct that you don't need a Mac+Windows bundle license (either single user or family) if you don't use Windows.

    All you need is 1Password from the Mac App Store and 1Password from the iTunes App Store to sync Mac and iOS. It sounds like you already have that, so you're all set in that regard.

    As for syncing, I'm not certain that I understand what the issue is. We recommend Dropbox syncing since it is automatic and secure. I know you said in your other post (which I only just came across in a completely unrelated thread and merged here) that you didn't want anyone to mention Dropbox, but for the sake of anyone else coming across this thread, I would be remiss not to link to our document which explains how secure syncing 1Password via Dropbox really is:

    Security of storing 1Password data in the cloud

    If you are having some specific trouble with Dropbox syncing or iTunes File Sharing, please let me know. I'd be happy to provide more specific assistance if I know what sort of trouble you are having.

    Cheers,
  • TonyK
    TonyK
    Community Member
    I will not use Dropbox or iCloud for storing my password database.

    I find the lack of understanding on why we are so upset over WiFi syncing being removed to be a major blocking point as meaningful discussion. From what I am seeing some customers are very annoyed at this development. Those of us who know about the forums are making our thoughts and feelings known. However, do not think this represents the entire user base. From a marketing stand point it might be helpful to think in olden terms. If someone sends a letter to a company, broadcaster, government official, there are X number of people who are generally believed to feel the same way but for whatever reason will not write.

    My feeling is AgileBits should be taking this very seriuosly that there are a number of people who are voicing their objections to the removal of WiFi sync and that AgileBits should consider adding it back with a patch release and quickly. Because until then I am telling my friends and co-workers to avoid 1P4 because they lose the ability to sync between their desktop and their devices.
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    Tony, I absolutely agree with you. Not everyone who has a feature request or concern will voice their opinion, and certainly not in a way that is useful for us.


    We have the best customers on the planet, and I am reminded of it time after time. You obviously care enough to contact us about this. Thank you for your passion! I wish more folks in this world shared it.

    We deeply appreciate customer input and take requests into account constantly. Offhand, I know that we have responded to direct customer feedback with regard to the size of the browser extension on the desktop, updating the legacy Leopard app, the timing of the update checks in the Mac application, Growl support, and much more.

    Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with. I have passed your vote for this along to the developers and would be happy to pass any additional feedback to them as well.
  • jetwrench
    jetwrench
    Community Member
    Tony has nailed my concerns on this issue. I happily upgraded to 1Password 4 on my iOS devices and it has worked well. Nice upgrade. Today I added a new login using my Mac with version 3.8.2 and was not able to sync. This is a major pain. I had Dropbox at one time and removed because it just seemed too intrusive. The WiFi sync was a great feature. Why get rid of it? Now I'm stuck trying to figure out the iTunes file sync thing. Something I had always liked about 1Password is that it just worked. Now it seems broken and left me digging for solutions.
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Welcome to the forums, jetwrench.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]The response to 1Password 4 for iOS has been fantastic, and we can’t thank everyone enough! While reviewing all the great feedback and requests, we heard loud and clear that direct syncing between iOS and Mac is important for many people, and we plan to do something about it.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]1Password 3 provided direct syncing between Mac and iOS via Wi-Fi syncing, and while it was great in it’s day, it was never perfect. Between the need for manual syncing and networking issues, it did not provide a great user experience. Over the years, our team fell in love with the ease of Dropbox and stopped using Wi-Fi sync altogether. Since none of us used it, and in light of the feature’s problematic nature for many of our users, we decided not to include Wi-Fi syncing when we rewrote 1Password 4 from the ground up.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]When we released 1Password 4 for iOS, many people wrote in to explain that direct syncing was critical to their workflow. Some need it because of work rules, some because of regional restrictions that prevent access to sync solutions like Dropbox. Others simply prefer to keep all their data locally without depending on the cloud.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]If you’re one of the people who requires the ability to sync directly, rest assured that we’ve heard from you that this is critical to your needs.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]We’ve started on a new way to sync data directly over USB and it is already in private beta testing. We’re pretty excited about this because almost all of the support issues caused by Wi-Fi syncing were related to weird network configurations. By syncing directly over USB, we can avoid all those issues. Hopefully, we will never have to ask a customer to reboot their router again[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]We don’t have an ETA on when USB syncing will be available, but beta testing results so far have been promising. If you rely on direct syncing, please stick with 1Password 3 for a little while longer until the USB sync solution is completed.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]We’ll post more information about USB syncing soon. Stay tuned![/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif](via [/font]our most recent blog post[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif])[/font]
  • Horse
    Horse
    Community Member
    100% agree please continue with your hard work and bring back local syncing.
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    Will do. :)
  • drwho
    drwho
    Community Member
    I have to agree with the OP. I for one very much appreciated the ability to perform wifi sync. In my case, I used the sync to update 1Password iOS for using specific folders per iOS device. I've never experienced any problems with wifi syncing. On the contrary, combined with iTunes' wifi sync and 1Password's wifi sync keeping everyone's device up to date with passwords was a breeze. Since updating to version 4 of the iOS app, everyone's password db is now out of sync and I have to force myself to deligently manually connect each device and copy the data file. Not only is this frustrating, I am now forced to share the entire password db with everyone which I can't afford to do.

    I think for those of us who have been using 1Password for so long that it's now part of our routine, removal of features without requesting feedback from your customer community is short sighted to say the least. I for one don't recall seeing a notice from 1Password (through the app I should add as I only just registered here) for a vote to remove this feature. It also frustrates me to read that just because the folks at Agilebits weren't using the feature they decided to remove it? Really?! You have a large community of users that rely on the features of the application and you decided to remove it? If there were reliability issues then fix it in the ground up re-write.

    Ok so much for my rant. Please add this feature back in to the new version.
    In the meantime, how can I sync using file syncing in iTunes but restrict to specific folders in for the different devices. Also, if this can be accomplised using Dropbox I'd like to know how as well.

    Regards,
    Arif
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    Welcome to the forums, Arif! Thanks for your feedback. We really appreciate it.

    [font="helvetica, arial, sans-serif"]Not a single member of our team [/font]or the entire group of beta testers[font="helvetica, arial, sans-serif"] used Wi-Fi syncing. The beta team is a pretty large group, and the issue never came up the entire beta period. Obviously for this issue the beta testing group was not representative of the entire user base. It can be hard to assess usage since for privacy reasons we don't collect any data on [/font]1Password users or the way in which they use the app. T[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]he demand for direct syncing was simply not apparent prior to the release. But we listened to all the awesome 1Password users and used the feedback to help steer us to USB syncing. [/font][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]That is precisely why [/font]USB syncing is in development[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]. [/font] :D

    We encourage you to stick with 1Password 3 for iOS if you need direct syncing right now, and I will definitely pass your vote for selective syncing along to the developers. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. We are always here to help!
  • drwho
    drwho
    Community Member
    Thank you khad. I've tried searching for how to downgrade to 1Password 3 for iOS but can't find any info on it. I suppose I can just install a clean copy and sync from the desktop app. I'll do this if there is no recommended procedure.
    Overall, I have to say that this is by far the most useful app I have on my ipads and iphones and I've lost count of how many people I've converted to it. The selective syncing and local non-cloud/public server syncing would be very much a desired feature to have in the near future.

    I have enabled beta builds on my 1Password 3.8 desktop application, would the usb syncing feature be available to test or will it be closed to a beta test group? If the latter, how can I join that group?

    Kind regards,
    Arif
  • Hi Arif,

    If you bought 1Password 3 for iOS, you'll find it in the Purchases section, please read this for more information.

    At the moment, the USB Sync tool is in a private beta test within our private beta group to ensure we fix all the critical bugs first and once it's ready, we'll release a public beta for everybody. Unfortunately, I don't have a timeframe on this as it is still in heavy development.

    The USB Sync Tool will be available as a separate tool, rather than blended in the 1Password 3 app for now.

    Once it is ready, we'll announce in this forum.

    Thanks!

  • drwho
    drwho
    Community Member

    Thanks.

  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni

    On behalf of Mike and myself, you are very welcome. We're very pleased with USB syncing so far, and hope to make it available more widely soon.

    Thanks for your kind words and support!

  • SomeGuy
    SomeGuy
    Community Member

    +1 for adding back wifi sync.

    1Password is an awesome product. I use it every day and will continue to do so. Wish I could upgrade to the latest version. The lack of wifi sync is holding me back, though. Note I didn't say "USB sync."

    The addition of USB sync is a fine thing to add and it will likely be of value to many. However, since I use WiFi sync between all my iOS devices and iTunes on the Mac for my non-1Password syncing needs, plugging in a USB cable between Mac and these devices for sync at all is not part of my workflow. WiFi sync always works flawlessly for me with 1Password v3. FWIW, I plan to stay at the version of 1Password that supports WiFi sync and hope that his feature will make it back into the products at some point in addition to the USB sync option currently under development.

    Thanks for the great set of products and best wishes to the team for satisfying the needs of your diverse, demanding customers!

  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited March 2013

    Wi-Fi syncing never made it into version 4 since it was very brittle. You can review the Wi-Fi Sync Troubleshooting Guide yourself to see just how many things could go wrong.

    And this list didn't cover everything as we still have customers with unusual network configurations and have never been able to sync via the old Wi-Fi method. It's very frustrating to the users and for us.

    There are some valid use cases at the moment where direct sync is needed, though. For example, a really nice fellow from China emailed us explaining that the Great Firewall prevents all Dropbox access and he's been using Wi-Fi syncing as a workaround until the developers add iCloud syncing to me on Mac. We told him to keep using version 3 for now until Mac added iCloud support in the new year.

    Then there's the user experience itself: even when Wi-Fi worked it was cumbersome. You had to start 1Password on each device and trigger the sync. If you added new accounts and forgot to sync (or remembered to sync one device but not the other), you'd be without your data.

    For 4 years, all we heard about Wi-Fi sync is that it is a huge source of problems and disappointment for our customers. The developers rewrote 1Password from the ground up for version 4. There is no code shared with 1Password 3. Re-implementing Wi-Fi sync again was never on the list.

    The iTunes Sharing is more secure than Wi-Fi sync and does not have any of its connectivity issues. It is less convenient though. So we looked at ways to make things easier and have now rolled out USB syncing in beta form.

    If you cannot use Dropbox, you will be able to use iCloud in the new year when it's available on Mac. If you are unable to use iCloud and Dropbox and the iTunes File Sharing doesn't suit your needs, USB syncing is a great option.

    We're always evaluating new sync options, and we are very pleased to continue to offer a solution via USB where you can sync without relying on a central server but without all the heartache that Wi-Fi caused.

    If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. We are always here to help!

  • daharrin
    daharrin
    Community Member

    Khad,

    I'm evaluating 1Password now, and have been reading through the forums for answers related to the original post. I appreciate that your answers have been generally responsive and complete, so thanks in advance.

    I'm trying to determine how 1Password would fit into my daily use, in two general ways:

    1- I'd like to be able to sync my 1Password database among my work Mac, home Mac, and iPhone.

    • If I buy 1Password for the Mac from AgileBits, do I need separate licenses for the two Macs?

    • Is the upcoming USB syncing feasible in this scenario? How would Mac-to-Mac USB syncing work? I recognize how easily dropbox would handle the syncing issues among the three devices, but I'm also leery (like some of the other forum members) about not maintaining my password database locally.

    2- Can you recommend a good method for sharing access with another user? (say, a spouse) It might be mayhem to try to use a single database among several macs and iOS devices. Is there a good solution for how to make this work within a family?

    Thanks very much,

    Dan

  • thightower
    thightower
    Community Member
    edited March 2013

    Hey Dan

    1

    This topic covers some of the licensing examples if you purchase directly from the AgileBits web site http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/how_many_licenses.html In short if you are the only user then no you would not need a separate license for the individual Macs.

    If this doesn't fit exactly you could always purchase from the Mac App Store and it would allow you install on all Macs you feel comfortable having tied to your Apple ID used to purchase 1Password. * See note below about iCloud.

    AFAIK The USB syncing will not work Mac to Mac it would only work Mac to iOS. You may be able to do Mac to iOS and from that iOS to another Mac.

    2

    My wife and myself share a single database, between 3 Mac's, 2 iPhones and 2 iPads. All through Dropbox. In all honesty it is the best all around syncing method. It is a fairly great syncing method we get updates from one or the other in pretty near real time. There is no need to quit the app and reopen it, changes just appear. etc. Rarely we may need to clear a machines cache to get a login to show up but I cant tell you the last time I had to do that. Its been that long ago.

    • In 1Password 4 when it debuts will have iCloud syncing, that may also be a syncing option for you if you don't prefer Dropbox. If thats the case you would need to purchase from the Mac App Store as thats the only version that will allow iCloud syncing. However do note 1Password Mac is currently unable to sync with iCloud and you would either need to try the USB method or try the Dropbox method.

    You are correct in that if you intend on sharing one database between multiple devices via USB sync. It could get really problematic.

    I do have licenses to 1Password 3 from the Agilebits site as well as the Mac App Store and I prefer the Mac App Store version as it will allow the option for iCloud syncing when 1Password 4 debuts.

    If you have any specific questions as to family syncing feel free to ask away and I will do my best to answer them for you.

    3

    You database is always locally stored using Dropbox, and you always have backups in a separate location on your hard drive if thats your concern.

    I cant say for sure but I think 100% of the team here use Dropbox,though I have a sneaking suspicion that a few may be already using iCloud. :P
    The point being the team trust Dropbox with there data and I am sure they would not do that unless they felt 100% confident in Dropbox.

    Having said that its always a personal decision to trust a cloud service.

    I remember my way early days here when I was trying 1Password after moving to a Mac. I didn't want to use Dropbox I was leery myself. I tried and experimented with other methods at the time but that lasted a day or so. Especially after hearing from the guys about how seamless Dropbox was.

    Thats when my love affair with Dropbox and 1Password began. Circa mid 2008

    I believe in Dropbox and 1Password so much I am a volunteer moderator at both forums.

  • daharrin
    daharrin
    Community Member

    thightower,

    Thanks very much for your response. I wasn't aware of the family license, so that's a great help. You also make a great argument for using dropbox. I'll give it further consideration.

  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited March 2013

    On behalf of T. Hightower, you are quite welcome! :-)

    There are just a couple points I'd like to elaborate on. Dropbox syncing is, in fact used by 100% of the AgileBits team.

    From the moment we designed the Agile Keychain data format we ensured that it was able to withstand an attack should your data fall into the wrong hands, either as a result of a Dropbox breach or if someone physically stole your computer. As such, we use AES encryption along with PBKDF2 key strengthening to protect your sensitive data. Please do be sure to read our document on this:

    Security of storing 1Password data in the cloud

    As long as you use a secure master password that you don't use elsewhere, your 1Password data is incredibly safe even when stored on a service like Dropbox. If you're not sure about the strength of your master password, please do take review our tips for creating strong, memorable master passwords.

    Last of all, I can't think of many better ways to show just how strongly your 1Password data is protected from sophisticated, targeted attacks than by pitting it against the pre-eminent password cracking tool John the Ripper. That's exactly what we did, and you can read about it in the aforelinked blog post. :)

    I hope that helps you make an informed decision. Please let me know.

This discussion has been closed.