It was done at roughly the same time that the company switched to a subscription model and their focus switched from consumer to business.

...shortly thereafter, Apple released their own Passwords app, largely Sherlocking 1Password from a consumer perspective.

If this had been your business, what would you have done? I would have done exactly what they did.

You raise an excellent point, and the truth is that I don't know.

That doesn't change the consumer perspective: I'm paying more for a worse product.