I have high expectations for free apps/services: They need to work immediately without a learning curve. See "hallway testing". They need to be competent but only modestly useful, if better alternatives are not available.
I have different high expectations for something I pay for. They need to be marketed to me, proving to me that they solve my real life problems competently. They can have a reasonable learning curve.
You could reject some very good free apps then. But I kinda agree with you. It's partly the phenomenon of attaching little value to something one gets for cheap/free. And conversely, people can bend over backwards to be impressed by something they pay a lot of money for.
I think the difference is that if it's a free app[1], the developer wants me to use it and I need to be convinced that it's worth my time.
If it's a paid app, I've already decided that it's worth money. If the app offers enough value for me to pay, then it offers enough value for me to learn what I need to learn.
[1] excluding open source - sure they want me to use it, but that's more like "here it is, use it if you want it". My expectations there are very different, particularly since I can often change things if it doesn't quite do what I want.
That is a risk from this attitude. I'd wager that the savings from not ploughing through the dross outweigh the benefit of the few good ones that might be missed.
Especially considering the better ones with issues will hopefully come to our attention eventually by word of mouth (so we don't miss them, we are just a little late to the party), or attract competitors that fix those initial problems (or they themselves resolve those problems, which we then hear about through word of mouth and other sources).
Is the need for immediate usefulness of a free product a form of proof? I mean there is a lot of free crap out there, so are you trying to make a quick judgement with that? Why not the same demand of a paid product?
I think I see where you're coming from, but not sure.
I have different high expectations for something I pay for. They need to be marketed to me, proving to me that they solve my real life problems competently. They can have a reasonable learning curve.