Pinboard has been the same for years and I feel little attachment to the product.
I am unsure what to switch to, but Pinterest looks like an interesing and innovative solution.
If Pinterest looks interesting, then yeah you probably really hate Pinboard. I think it's a feature that I don't hit those annoying nag walls, get inundated with ads and tracking, load hundreds of images on a page, and require cookies and lots of JS to just browse feeds. Different strokes for different folks.
Why would you care if you get more value than you pay. Or alternatively, why would you pay for it if it didn't?
Are you switching only because of the above reason or is there something missing that you'd like to find elsewhere?
I am, too, a long term Pinboard customer. I don't care if Maciej does no work whatsoever in an average year as long as Pinboard works or is fixed quickly when it doesn't. I may be biased, because my wife and I both enjoy his writing and talks a lot so it "feels" like we are to an extent sponsoring that too.
I don't pay for things expecting that they will get continually better. I pay for things so I can keep using them as they are.
Change is just as likely to make something worse as it is to make it better.
To put it another way, do you pay for email? And if you do, do you expect your email provider to be constantly "innovating" with their service, or do you expect them to simply provide a rock-solid dependable email service?
I find it tremendously encouraging that it is possible to manufacture such a business and keep it running as well as it does for so long.
I suspect that user idlewords does more than he lets on in his marketing.