Agreed. And with Edge/Authenticator, it's cross-platform as well (Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS), and as of recently, it's close to feature parity. We dropped our Lastpass subscription. It's probably families like ours that has 1Password worried.

I long hoped Apple would buy out 1Password and include it in their iCloud+ subscription.

There were [rumours of exactly that](https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/10/apple-not-buying-1password/) a few years ago

I wish the Apple password manager worked cross platform.

Apple provides a plug-in for Chrome to allow use of your stored passwords on Windows. Announced last year. I've tried it on Windows, appears to work, but do not know how secure it is.

--- Edited to remove references to Linux. Appears to be Windows only.

Yes. But you can't even use those password on Mac when you are using Firefox or Chrome.

It seemed quite buggy when I tried it.

Given Apple's track record with other web-related services on non-Apple platforms, don't expect it to improve much or at all.

Apart from “works on stuff you didn’t buy from Apple” (a feature that I think isn’t in Apple’s interest to support well), what major features does it have that keychain syncing over iCloud doesn’t already have, or could easily add?

It goes beyond passwords. I use 1P to store documents, 2FA codes, IBANs, notes. You can also attach arbitrary metadata to each entry, and I don’t think there’s the ability to filter by category in the iCloud keychain.

Shared family vaults are the big thing for me -- I don't want to share _all_ of my passwords with my family, but 1P is a good way to share stuff like streaming service logins.

iCloud KeyChain has automatic sharing of services, but only for Apple Services (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203046)

That might be because they want to make their own services more attractive (if so, I think they made the wrong choice), but also could be a legal thing.

https://www.apple.com/family-sharing/: “You can add anyone to your Family Sharing group age 13 and older and invite them to share an Apple Card”, so members of An Apple iCloud ‘family’ neither have to be family members nor live at the same address.

That’s broader than, for example, the TOS of Netflix (https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse: “The Netflix service and any content accessed through the service are for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household”)

Apple might fear getting sued if they make it easy to share a Netflix password with members of a family plan.

Considering that Netflix’s ToS and Apple’s Family Sharing both say that they’re only meant for people in the same household, I don’t see “Apple might fear getting sued” as an issue.

Where do you read that for Apple’s services? Reading the “Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions” (at the confusing URL https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/), it doesn’t mention household, always spells “Family” with a capital letter, and as far as I can tell, only mentions these restrictions on who can join a Family:

“Family Sharing Rules: You can only belong to one Family at a time, and may join any Family no more than twice per year. You can change the Apple ID you associate with a Family no more than once every 90 days. All Family members must share the same Home Country”

They would've immediately halted cross-platform support or at least severely limited it due to institutional/organizational issues. Any 1Password subscriber not using an iPhone would soon be unhappy.

Although this could happen, I think it’s unlikely. Apple knows it’s a services company as much as a hardware company now. If you look at their existing services, they are not excluding non-Apple users.

- Apple Music has a web UI and Android app

- FaceTime recently added 3rd party links allowing non-Apple users to join calls

- Keychain is being made compatible with Windows Chrome

It’s clear from raising this much money that 1P owners are doing a “private IPO” or adding more products and features. If it’s a cash out, wouldn’t you want a privacy focused company to buy it instead of VCs funding it and expecting a return? If they are building new features and products, Apple buying it could bankroll that and temper price spikes.

> Apple Music has a web UI and Android app

This is exactly what I'm referring to. I put up with Apple's website for more than a year as my primary casual-use computer became a Windows PC.

I work on iOS apps for a living. App Store Connect has always been terrible. Bugs linger for years. Elements continue to break in unexpected ways. The place where developers receive feedback from Apple is still hard to find even though it's immensely important. The website received a major redesign a few years ago and the bugs were still there!

Now apply that lack of care to a music website. Being forced to login daily. Asked to perform 2FA daily, so I need to keep my iPhone near me if I expect to play music. Songs inexplicably not playing, if play fails repeatedly, maybe a page refresh will work. Songs inexplicably only playing previews, forcing you to log out and log back in. Zero effort to restore your previous searches.

Apple makes attempts at providing services on the web. But for those of us attempting to use those services, the experience varies from subpar to outright hostile.

> Keychain is being made compatible with Windows Chrome

Again, see how people review this in this very thread.

---

Simply providing the service does not mean it's good. That's what I mean by "institutional" and "organizational". They half- or quarter-ass what they ship, and then they leave it to rot.

As a 1password user on Linux, Mac, Chrome, Firefox, and Android, dear god I hope that doesn't happen.

So what's the pitch to the investors then - they'd arguably need to disclose this possibilty? Or is this next level of pumping up before dumping on public market via IPO?