I don't see how you can be against subscription pricing for living software. You're paying the publisher/developers to continue developing and supporting the software and run associated services. It's the only sustainable model for long lived software and 1Password is good enough to be worth it.
In this case, the subscription service doesn't allow for local vaults. You need to be using the 1Password hosted cloud service to store your passwords. For most of us that is a nonstarter.
This isn't true. Open up Preferences, go to the Advanced tab, and there's a checkbox "Allow creation of vaults outside of 1Password accounts". Check this and you can create local vaults again.
I believe it's disabled by default for 2 reasons:
1. Simplicity. Most people who use the subscription service don't want local vaults, because they won't be synced or available on the web (or subject to administrative controls). By disabling local vaults, you can't accidentally create one.
2. Once you re-enable local vaults, you have a local Primary vault and unlocking that is how you unlock 1Password on this computer. This is a potential point of confusion, because you'll be using a different password now than your 1Password Account password, which comes back to the simplicity angle.
If you already paid a substantially higher price when they were non-subscription based, it can rankle. Especially if the amount paid would have covered well past this point if subscription pricing was available at the time.
I don't think people are complaining that it's a subscription much as they are complaining that the switch seems to leave them with only semi-supported software relatively soon after a full price purchase (even if that may or may not be an accurate assessment of reality).
They are complaining about both, which means they might have a good argument but it's infected with their bad argument.
Can't have your cake and eat it, too. But I suspect they also just don't want to pay a subscription. Well, who does? I also don't like having to pay for coffee.
There is nothing wrong with full price software. It fully works, it just needs to be clearly outlines how long your support lifecycle is, which many companies don't think about. Pay full price, get X years of bugfixes (and access to new versions, depending) from date of purchase.
There's three types of model really, and the problem is when companies have multiple models in place and don't treat them equivalently.
Pay in advance - This is like buying a car. You get a warranty for certain covered problems. Costs a lot.
Pay subscription for local software. - This is like leasing a car. You pay a lesser amount each month, but have full usage of the vehicle. You lose access at the end of the lease.
Pay subscription for cloud based software - This is like using ride-sharing (or maybe a community shared vehicle system) for everything. You have access to the software on demand when you need it, and lose access when no longer a member / you stop using it.
All these models work. The problem with some full price software is they were selling it like it had a warranty and not defining the warranty. Expectations are all over the place, and when they don't match reality, people get upset.
Additionally, in this case people are upset about how there's two models in place and they don't appear to be handled the same, as they had some expectation of a type of warranty with full price software, and all of a sudden it feels like the company has changed how they are handling warranty requests for already sold full price software.
As a company, communicate clearly and follow through with that you've stated, and these problems go away.
I don't want any associated services - Dropbox will host and sync the password wallet files for free. Their other service is downloading icons for websites, but I don't want to send them a list of all my websites.
Yes, there is the occasional need to update Dropbox API code, or Chrome/Android API changes, but their asking price is very steep.
I already paid over $60 for the Android and OS X versions.
For 1PW it might be ideal to push updates and not charge for them. As a security/tool provider out of date software could be compromised or have issues which might damage their public image.
