It would be nice if it disabled itself when another password manager is installed...

Oh, please don't! I use both 1Password and keychain for different purposes, and I want access to both. I definitely don't want keychain silently disabling itself just because I installed 1Password!

Or at least asked you outright when installing a new one; "Please choose a default app to perform this function: Password Management" and then show you a list of currently installed ones (+ the newly installed one of course)…

Problem is, lots of users have work and personal passwords in different apps.

Many of us use more than one (especially shared use with work) and the default behavior seems correct.

I actually use both Keychain and LastPass. They are more or less in synch. I need LastPass (or at least another non-Keychain alternative) because I don't just work in the Apple ecosystem, but I use Keychain as well because it is very convenient when I'm on an Apple device.

There are people who have their personal passwords in iCloud Keychain, and have work credentials/keys in 1Password.

Keychain is opt-in, users choose wether they want to use it or not when configuring their iPhone for the first time.

Not in my experience. I never turn it on (because I want to use Bitwarden), but Safari always offers to save passwords unless I manually disable it.

There are three different things here:

- The keychain is an essential part of macOS and iOS; if an application wants to securely save data then that is the interface it uses. This is not optional because a huge proportion of applications would break if it were removed.

- iCloud Keychain is the feature of iCloud that syncs your keychain to iCloud. iCloud itself is opt-in, and this particular feature of iCloud is opt-in as well, I think, or at the very least optional even if you use iCloud.

- Safari has a built-in password manager, like every other browser these days. This saves to the keychain, whether that’s synced or not.