No money is needed to get the devices to communicate, because the devices are no longer expected to communicate. iOS has been fully independent of macOS (to end-users) for half its life.
It fails so frequently that it's just not able to be used.
Meh. They should just copy their photos off their idevice using USB PTP mode. That's USB config 1 when an idevice plugs into a PC. No macOS required. No iTunes required. Done. Solved. As for the crap, isn't that an argument to NOT migrate via iTunes?
Most of iPhone users have a 5Gb iCloud account where not even a whatsapp backup fits, and they still need a computer to migrate all the data
ICloud storage is super cheap, especially compared to the price of a smartphone every 2 years. If you're not using this, you're cheating yourself out of one of the biggest advantages that iOS has over other computing platforms. iCould backup is the one thing in iCloud that really just works.
Plus there's dropbox. Solved.
But it still isn't strictly necessary.
That, and the fact that you're still unable to put music inside an iPhone if you don't a) buy it from the app store or b) using iTunes
Wat? Who still does this?
But it's very important not to allow your iPhone to talk to your Mac because that means iTunes will run and make everything worse.
iTunes: Hello!