Thoughts on Graphical License Cards

Our new Graphical License Cards for 1Passwd are getting a lot of attention and generating a great discussion. At this moment, there are 70 comments on the main blog article, over 1000 diggs, 99 Digg comments, and hundreds of private emails. TUAW and The Apple Blog also chimed in.

All this discussion has been great and is helping us understand how to make entering license information as easy as possible, or "natural", if you will allow me to use the word natural for software.

So why mess with something that "works"? Well. the end goal of the these cards is to make registering software more natural and provide the purchaser a high-resolution experience. When you go to a conference, you expect to get a badge; it simply feels natural and is part of your reward for paying for the privilege to attend. While at MacWorld this year, Roustem and I realized that a card like the one around our neck would work great for our users. That is where the concept of this License Card image originated:

With this card, users simply drag-and-drop it from their email onto the 1Passwd:

Here's some of the feedback we've received so far, including the Good, Bad, and downright Ugly. Bad comments don't mean the author didn't agree with me; they were simply non-constructive.

The Good

1. Entering in a long sequence of numbers and letters is an unnatural act. That's why we invented speed dial, cell phone contact lists and so on.
2. That's a pretty cool idea. It's much more user-friendly than long, hex license keys that we have to deal with all too frequently.
3. my only problem with this is now 1passwd.app shows up in all of my open as menus for .jpg files
   My thoughts: Good point. This will be fixed in the next revision. We'll do what FileChute does and accept any type of drop; OS X will then not associate 1Passwd with any file types.
4. Cards look pretty cool, but when you going to add simple essential features like basic authentication?
   My thoughts: A passionate user that wants more features! Basic auth will be available in beta this week.
5. for the record, I think your license cards are pretty cool.
6. No, this idea is bad. Panic has a much better idea. When you buy Transmit, it uses a link to submit the serial number to the program so that you don't even have to type it in.
   My thoughts: This is a great idea and one we've used in the past. The only problem is the CS load it created when a user's Launch Services got out of whack, the link got truncated, or the user assumed we had a typo and helpfully tried to add a http:// prefix. I expect these cards to reduce CS.
7. I think that the idea of graphical registration is a terrible idea. Granted it may seem more intuitive to beginners, but how hard is it to tell them to "copy and paste the following code into the registration dialog" ? I use the password manager info.xhead, and I back up all of them in paper form. An image makes these tasks impossible.
   My thoughts: Info.xhead is a great program; why do you assume the author (who is obviously talented) would not add attachments and images to his product? After all, AquaticPrime has been using attachments for years. Try contacting him.
8. I don't see how this would make things much easier for the user compared to just sending the same XML registration data as a file by mail and enabling the registration by double-clicking. However, it sure does look fancy and from a marketing point of view I can see the benefits.
9. There were a lot of people that made a hoopla about switching from the text based DOS to the GUI Windows or from Apple 2 (text) to Mac (GUI).
10. As far as the License cards go, it worked like a charm, very easy (and sexy).
    My thoughts: Very easy and sexy. Seems like the definition of Mac!

The Bad

1. A solution in search of a problem.
2. No, a brilliant and truly Mac-like registration scheme would be the one OS X uses for registration - it doesn't.
   My thoughts: obviously I would be open to allowing Apple to license our software and include it in the base OS :)
3. One fault though. You can't copy it to a piece of paper with a pencil.
4. In OS X you can highlight text and then drag it into another window to copy it, functionally being exactly the same as this.
   My thoughts: Ensuring the *entire* string is selected can be a PITA and is a great source of CS issues.
5. This is ridiculous! should serials numbers be sexy? This is what separates common internet fools with people who get some real world interaction. There is absolutely no reason data should be sexy. Lets say im working in Office, when all of a sudden i am just stunned at the beauty of some render of boring data... would that be SFW?
   My thoughts: This is obviously a Windows user who is used to being abused :)
6. anyone too stupid to cut and paste a serial number is TOO STUPID TO USE ANY PROGRAM IN THE FIRST PLACE!
   My thoughts: Another abused Windows user
7. yeah… whoopie…. now i can try to find a way to store dozens of graphic files, instead of easily copy/pastable, searchable text strings.
   My thoughts: Text-based license codes are not searchable! They are meaningless codes. Simply store the 1Passwd receipt in GMail and search for 1Passwd; you will find it without issue.

The Ugly

1. DRM sucks in any form, even when it comes with pretty pictures.
2. it makes bootlegging this shit a pain!
3. I wonder if the author realizes that you can drag-n-drop images in windows too?
4. Anyone who uses the vague term "Mac Like" can be described by the more specific term: "Mac Tard."
5. "What could be more Mac like?" how about make it over priced and shiny?
6. cant wait till i see product keys posted on flickr sites ;)

The most regularly occurring complaint is that license key programs don't support images. Don't tell this to Jon Trainer from Outer Level! His LicenseKeeper looks like a darn slick solution for all your needs and handles attachments just fine. Here's Jon's tutorial on how to save 1Passwd license cards using LicenseKeeper.

Other developer feedback came from Dave Batton at Mere Mortal Software (cool name BTW!), when he mentioned that he liked the idea but wasn't convinced he could use it for his new (as-yet unreleased) application. We'll be open-sourcing all of the source code for generating and reading these license cards, so that might influence his decision.

What do you think?