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These need not be the only two options. App developers could charge money for updates made i.e. new versions while the old versions keep working as advertised.

Instead of "cloud storage" which might incur ongoing charges, apps can very well hook onto my GDrive/OneDrive to persist data. Also, games have done this "free updates to this app I paid" for years now.

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Yes, "pay for a major new version" was the industry model for many years. Office, Photoshop, etc. In the end you're sort of forced to upgrade by file compatibility every two or three years, so it's a subscription with a slightly uneven payment schedule.

There are still some apps that do this, Things is a good example. But that creates all kinds of other challenges when a big part of the product is a service (like ours) if you want to support all versions of the client in perpetuity.

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