Frankly TextMate met my expectations just fine and I don't regret paying for it.

> we didn't get any real update for like three or four years

Call me old-fashioned but I can't keep up with updating all my tools every few month. Maybe three four years is a bit too long but it's nice to have some period of stability. Despite not having major updates TextMate remained very popular. It must have gotten many things right from the very first release. I wish there were more products like that.