Month: November 2020

by Matthew on News

1Password Update Includes Ability to Unlock with Apple Watch

I have been a user of 1Password for several years now. I use the personal subscription on it which is something in the region of $36/year. I have four vaults with 560 passwords/logins/bank details, etc… stored. I use it every day on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro and it has proved invaluable for storing complex passwords that are unique for every website I visit.

1Password updated 1Password this week. I typically don’t bother paying attention to updates because I find them mostly uninteresting. I’m not saying the updates are not good, but I just typically don’t read what is new and I just use 1Password as I always have used it.

I accidentally stumbled upon one new item in the latest 7.7 update that launched this week that said there is now an option on the Mac to unlock 1Password with an Apple Watch. As an Apple Watch user I appreciate my MacBook unlocking automatically almost every time I wear my Apple Watch. This feature intrigued me.

The 7.7 update arrived on the App Store for me this morning, so I quickly updated to test and see how the feature worked. Enabling it was quite simple. Open up the preferences, select security, and then check the Apple Watch box in the “Unlock using” section at the top.

I manually locked 1Password and then opened it. My watch made the familiar clicking noise that sounds when you log in to the Mac. Rather than automatically allow me access to 1Password on my Mac, I was notified on my watch to double click the bottom button. After doing that, 1Password opened.

The downside is the double click on the Watch button. Reaching over to use Touch ID is a little quicker for me, and I’ll probably carry on using that method. I don’t use an external keyboard for my MacBook at the moment, but I plan on doing so sometime next year when I renovate my home office. At that point I believe Unlock with Apple Watch will become a more useful option for me given that I wont have easy access to Touch ID if opt for a dock that requires my MacBook to be closed.

What I do like is that both Unlock with Touch ID and Unlock with Apple Watch work simultaneously. Even though my watch clicks to indicate I can use it to unlock 1Password, I can still just use Touch ID if it is the most convenient option at the time.

I do look forwards to other apps implementing this feature including DayOne and anything else I like to keep behind security.

 
by Matthew on General

Amazon Eero Ordered

With my home gaining more and more wireless devices as time goes on, I decided today to order the Amazon Eero to test and see how it performs around my house.

I currently use the Virgin Media Super Hub 3 and although it performs better than the previous model I had, it’s becoming more apparent that it’s struggling to keep up with all the wireless devices that we connect to it.

Wireless devices include multiple laptops, a desktop, several phones, watches, security cameras, several Amazon Echos, a couple of Fire TVs, an Apple TV, and probably other devices that I cannot think of right now.

Virgin state that Super Hub 3 can handle more than 20 devices, but it’s becoming clear that with all the streaming of movies, cameras, as well as many Zoom meetings this year, that it just can’t handle the traffic we push through it day to day.

I’m looking forwards to testing the Amazon Eero when it arrives tomorrow. According to the stats, each device can handle up to 128 connected devices. It is recommended to keep the number of devices to 30 per Eero if streaming is being used, but as our devices are spread around three floors in our home, this limitation should be OK for us for some time to come as some streaming devices will be connected to a different Eero than another streaming device.

With Amazon starting their Black Friday deals recently, I managed to pick up a pack of three Eero’s for £149.40.

I’ll be testing over the weekend to see how they perform and will write up my findings and let you know if I can recommend it or not. My recommendation criteria is getting a good upload and download speed from any location in the house where the internet is used. My office, for example, is at the top of the house and signal is very weak and often drops. My download speed is typically around 220Mbps under perfect conditions, but right now on just one floor up it has dropped all the way down to 5Mbps. It sometimes isn’t that bad, but right now it just seems the network is overwhelmed.