A bit cynical? Well, they were your words
Usually I'm frustrated when "front ends"
do change unnecessarily with no benefit to the user. I'm happy to say Tormach had better things to do. Despite appearances, this a
significant change, not only to the underlying linuxcnc but also to their own code. This upgrade is also a significant investment their part and the price they're asking is just a token price, it probably just covers the cost of creating and packaging the stick.
Of course nobody is forcing you to pay the $19.95 if you don't want to. You can continue to use v1 as long as you wish, or download linuxcnc directly from linuxcnc.org.
I'm very happy with both the new and previous versions. I think they're doing a great job and deserve due credit.
Please forgive me for being just a little cynical....
Regards
Step