I remember well the huge bills for Photoshop back in the day Don, they were scary!
But three coffees in Starbucks costs more than Photoshop+Lightroom every month so now it’s not really much to pay.
On the ‘intuitive’ front I think both are lacking equally so, but obviously Ps holds no problems for me because I’m so used to it.
Short of the “16bit vs 15bit+1 level” thing, there is nothing in GIMP that can’t be done in Ps, but quite a bit you can do in Ps that you can’t do in GIMP.
It’s funny you say that about Ps users - I find Linux users are the same! But if you are on Linux then you do not have the mainstream image processor options, so Photoshop does even enter your field of view options-wise.
As a Mac user I fully appreciate the value of ‘free OS’ - why anyone would pay for the carve-up that is Windows is quite beyond me - but that’s the cornerstone choice people make when they get a new machine.
For obvious reasons Linux and MacOS are quite similar, and I for one would like to see the likes of Adobe cater directly for Linux, imo they are missing a trick there because RT+Photoshop is a brilliant combo.