He lost me at paying for services. Sure, me in my 40s can afford to pay for a good 200$ worth of services, but when I was starting out in high school and college, I could not even fathom paying for anything. And that was the time I was doing real work in my life, not like now.

I don't know what this allergy to features are. You can disable the features. It is not hard. I remember when they used to force conversation feature down everyone's throats. Some oldies hated it, but when they got used to it they appreciated it. Now they have an off feature.