Mac App Reviews

Wallet ($20: Shareware, v3.0.2) is a password and information encryption app.

When I reviewed AllSecure I mentioned another app as the main competitor to it, Wallet. I decided to review Wallet to help round out my secure information manager reviews. (this app was downloaded as a trial from Acrylic’s website)

Interface Rating:

The interface for Wallet is almost exactly the same as the interface for Apple’s Address Book.

Groups are on the left side, the entries list is in the middle, and the item inspector is on the right. It is very clear and very intuitive for anyone who has ever used Address Book, which I would bet is the majority of mac users. The interface is functional and attractive, not bad.

Functionality Rating:

Taking into account what Acrylic advertises on their website, the functionality of Wallet is as follows.

Secure Information Manager Wallet is a secure information manager much like AllSecure and 1Password. There are three types of information that Wallet displays by default: serial numbers, passwords, and credit cards. These aren’t the only types that Wallet supports by any means. When creating a new group of items, you are given the option to create and label whatever fields you want for storing information.

This is enormously useful and is is fairly unique to Wallet. Bringing a secure database that is as easy to use as Wallet to the field is a good accomplishment.

Password Manager The second primary function of Wallet is Password management. It has the standard features of program in this field, such as storing username/password pairs with the URL, a strong password generator, and auto filling. Importing existing data through text files (commonly known as comma or tab seperated values) was easy and worked well. After I exprorted my data from 1Password and imported it with Wallet, the entries weren’t reconized as passwords right away. I found that if I draged my imported items to the passwords section it allowed me to connect the dots, so to speak.

Very intutive, it works. Password organization and management in the program work as well as could be hoped for, but the browser side is less than impressive. Wallet does have a menu bar app that will auto fill login info without leaving the browser window, but you must enter your master password every time you fill login information.

While this arguably provides greater security, it’s an unnecessary hassle. The auto fill only works with Safari, which means that it is competing directly with the keychain; and since the autofill is much less convenient and doesn’t really buy you anything that the keyhain isn’t already doing better, it is kind of underwhelming.

Syncing This is another one of Acrylic’s claimed features, placed prominently on Wallet’s homepage. While it is nice to have MobileMe syncing built into the program, it doesn’t do a whole lot for you unless you also have the iPhone version (as the keychains are synced with MobileMe). I didn’t get a chance to test the iPhone app, but syncing your secure information over the internet is a very good feature. Actually beating 1Password’s iPhone app in this respect (as it only syncs over Wifi).

Misc The ability to attach files to entries is also included in Wallet. While this feature isn’t earth-shattering, the implementation sets it apart from the competition. You can Quick Look the encrypted files directly from the entry in Wallet. I know of no other secure information manager that offers this feature on the mac platform. It’s very convenient and adds to the mac nature of the program.

Value Rating:

Acrylic is selling Wallet for $20, which I think is a very fair price. It does offer features above an beyond the built in system utilities, and does so at a very reasonable price. It’s primary competitors generally sell at about twice the price for very similar features.

Overall Rating:

Wallet is a good, polished app that provides much needed features to the OS X experience. It could do a few things better, such as password handling, but its existing features are solid and it preforms as advertised.

encryption, password

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009, 9:34 pm and is filed under Review, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.