So why pay for turning the laptop into an airplane getting ready for take off, lack of incremental compilation, no support for mixed language debugging with JNI, 10 key combos, having to explicitly search issues (inspections), no javadoc tooltips by default?

None of that is accurate, in my experience of using it, but go on...

For those who don’t know: there is a free Apache licensed version of IntelliJ.

It’s usable for Java/scala development, but lacks features. Feature comparison at https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_....

And “whatever it is” is $499 for the first, $399 for the second, and $299 for later years (https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/#commercial?billing=yearl...)

That is the institutional pricing.

The individual price for Ultimate Edition is $149 the first year, $119 the second consecutive year, and $89 a year from then on.