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Kinda feels like Apple is deliberately making it horrible so you view paying them as the only ethical solution. For example, I don't have to do this song-and-dance to block ads on non-monopolized platforms.
This is not a defense but merely a correction: The small developer program is 85%/15% rather than 70%/30% for anyone making less than $1 million per year.
I mean I pay on several websites to not see ads, so it (paying to remove ads) seems like the normalest thing. And it should be the normalest thing.
The only weird thing here is that we pay a party that is not the one serving the ads, so the primary misses income from ads and potentially paying customers.
But I suspect that is what you meant with your remark.
Moreover, paying on every website is just insane overkill and very expense compared to the value you get from occasional visits (the sites I subscribe to I visit multiple times a day and they provide business value).
Something like Alby [0] could solve this though. But Crypto currency has become a dirty word around here ;) (Alby does allow fractions of cents to be transferred, like a stream, on website visits, it (among others) also powers per-second paying for Podcasts streams, splitting revenue between multiple podcast hosts, the podcast app and the central index if set up that way. It's hard to set up though, something fiat-currency, based with 0 overhead would be nice...).
You are enabling them and paying them for using ads. How is that the "normalest" or even normal thing to do? How do you expect them to stop showing ads if not only the ads themselves work, but even the ones who don't click ads pay them for having ads (to not show them, but ultimately it is for them having ads)?
It is not normal to expect something for free. You do not have the right to someone else's productivity on your terms, you have it on theirs.
Even the laptop's difficult to do much on unless I have it plugged into the dock and the two monitors.
I'm not sure when everyone and myself diverged, but it feels pretty strange.
I will not contribute to an ad-ridden world (whether by paying or using), but you do you.
They have a new version that is now $40 for a lifetime license. But the old version still works.