Thanks, tenfoot. That's helpful.
As for the CCC the control/micromanagement issue isn't the only reason I shy away from it. I also don't like things scanning around and crap like that and based on a lot of what I've read around here it can sometimes get a little weird about what it views as old/new/etc. I generally keep track of that stuff manually (I'll create little notepad docs of things I've installed and compare version numbers of things, etc). The auto Greenlight/Redlight stuff might actually kerfutz me more than help in a lot of cases... but that's because I'm a bit of a brainfarting weirdo.
My way isn't perfect and it's bitten me in the ass on occasion (like when I recently thought I was more up to date than I was) but all in all it works.
My DAW is also pretty much ALWAYS offline anyway unless I am going WAY out of my way to snag something specific so the usefulness of CCC in that scenario is limited. I just go through my account, check dates/version numbers/etc and cross reference them with what I already have installed or downloaded.
In a lot of ways it forces me to consider what's what more than an automatic bulk updater would and even boots me in the arse to try certain things out... like "Oh... we got this new thingie and such and such was updated. Gonna check those out." If I just did a one click I would not be analyzing things on that level and perhaps miss something or not contemplate it's potential usefulness to my projects as much.
Meh... I'm weird.