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Comment by blobster | Hacker News Reader

This is why we need good OS-level password managers. Phones and now computers have dedicated security chips which are infinitely more secure than any cloud solution. Such an easy market to grab that it boggles me why Apple and Google aren't aggressively going for it.

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Apple and Google both have solid options here, and I'm a happy user of Google's. But I also wouldn't want either of them to push their solutions aggressively, for competition reasons.

Do you consider your passwords to be "disposable" or easily replaceable? I could never trust Google with hundreds of passwords. The thought of their AI going haywire and essentially locking me out of the internet is terrifying.

> The thought of their AI going haywire and essentially locking me out of the internet is terrifying.

I think this is really unlikely; since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34092956 I've been gathering lockout reports on HN and they're mostly things like adding a phone number to your account and then forgetting about that when switching numbers.

Apple's solution seems just great if you only use Apple products. But I use Windows too.

So I don't really think the OS is the right place for a password manager, at least not without some standardized interoperability.

iCloud Keychain syncing, strong password suggestions in Safari, and WebAuthn passkeys are all part of Apple's strategy. When they don't buy a third party and deeply integrate it, they tend to operate by insinuating themselves as the platform default. What would you have them add to that?

Their "password manager" on Mac is called Keychain Access. The UX is very bad, the interface is old and clunky and it doesn't sync with iOS (if for example you create a secure note there's no way to access it on iOS) - not to mention that most people don't even know it exists, it's kind of a hidden feature. Meanwhile, on iOS the password manager is hidden in the settings and again it has pretty bad UI/UX. I understand that they want to hide the complexity away from the end user and make these kinds of features "just work", but in practice they feel pretty half-baked.

I agree that Keychain Access kinda sucks, but it's because Apple UI paradigm for it is different. For them, the Password Manager isn't a separate entity that's a source for copy-pasting passwords into arbitrary apps, instead it's a core Framework of the OS that apps integrate with. As such, it doesn't really have "its own UI" because each app provides the UI.

Of course, that does mean that it's less universally convenient like the other commercial apps.

As usual with Apple stuff, I guess they're not interested in making it a better separate app because their value proposition is "use our frameworks and get this feature 'for free' "

I’d say - ability to use it across platform or across system accounts. I like to use my personal LastPass when logged into my work laptop with corp account. Mind you, not to store work passwords, no, to have access to e.g. my Amazon account.

Additionally, I share my LastPass with my partner. Probably not a setup for most, but we find it convenient.

All that is achievable only when the password manager is not tied to the system login.

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