I am not stating that 37 Signals products are inferior at all. The classical mindset was that people would move from one product to another because of some kill

I am not stating that 37 Signals products are inferior at all. The classical mindset was that people would move from one product to another because of some killer feature or low cost alternative. 37Signals has seemed to flip this idea and challenge the idea of what better software means. This brought me to wonder how other users felt about their products and their motivations for using them. I like your distinction between effort and value. I don't agree at all with the notion of the amount of effort put in equals the amount of value to the user. It simply doesn't work in reality. The effort is also a vague concept as it could be related to development time, marketing, customer service, etc. Effort in dealing with users, gathering feedback and iterating on the product based on that feedback is what gains value for a product IMHO.