I've always used high, so maybe I should be using xhigh

Ya...you may be who I'm talking about though (if you're speaking from experience). If your methodology is "I used 4.6 max, so I'm going to try 4.7 max" this is fully on you - 4.7 max is not equivalent to 4.6 max, you want 4.7 xhigh.

From their docs:

max: Max effort can deliver performance gains in some use cases, but may show diminishing returns from increased token usage. This setting can also sometimes be prone to overthinking. We recommend testing max effort for intelligence-demanding tasks.

xhigh (new): Extra high effort is the best setting for most coding and agentic use cases.

I just switched to Signal.

You're now misinterpreting my argument and misrepresenting it. I did not, in any way, suggest that Anthropic was "pulling the rug" to its users nor that they were entitled to use their tokens using the API with third parties. Full stop.

Of course, third-party API usage wasn't intended to be allowed for consuming subscription tokens. This is exactly what my analogy was structured to explain; a Disneyland season pass isn't intended to be used solely for parking. Anthropic did not intend for subscription tokens to be consumed by third-parties the same way users did not intend to abuse the subscription to derive more value than what was allotted to them. Your analogy missed that last part, which is absolutely crucial to understand.

I don't understand how you're making the exact arguments I'm making, then somehow completely misunderstanding what's being said.

It's more buying a season pass for Disneyland, then getting told you can't park for free if you're entering the park even though free parking is included with the pass. Still not unreasonable, but brings to light the intention of the tool is to force the user into an ecosystem rather.