We discussed that ad-nauseum last year. Side by side installation actually creates a can of worms with anything that is shared and would also be very confusing for less savvy users. Tech support would also be a nightmare.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
We discussed that ad-nauseum last year. Side by side installation actually creates a can of worms with anything that is shared and would also be very confusing for less savvy users. Tech support would also be a nightmare.

Agreed, and would slow you down.

I couldn't begin to imagine the kind of uproar that kind of release pattern would cause on the forum. Theres enough problems now with panic about the new method that people don't like let alone complicate the whole thing by running two releases of the same version as you suggest.

If you're on a release that you find stable, in this case H and you upgrade to I and don't like it you can roll back to H and pick it up again when J comes out. The last released version will always have all the updates and fixes accumulated along the way.

I'm more prone to try and sell it to the forum in general how Noël suggests.

BobF
One of the advantages the old model had was the ability to install versions side x side.  Rather than bugfix only updates alternating with feature updates (or a variation), *I* think having the ability to install the new along side the previous would be better.
 

Side by side versions never were really separate version - just think about all the "Shared *" folders that e.g. installing X3 changed but were originally from "X2" ... so only the latest version was a true tested release version, all other (older) versions turned into some sort of hybrids (not even considering 3rd party software that changed over the years) ...
 
If you want true separate versions, you need two PCs ... use one main PC where you keep the productive Platinum version, use the other PC (any PC will do) to check out new versions ...
 
 

FreeFlyBertl

BobF
One of the advantages the old model had was the ability to install versions side x side.  Rather than bugfix only updates alternating with feature updates (or a variation), *I* think having the ability to install the new along side the previous would be better.
 

Side by side versions never were really separate version - just think about all the "Shared *" folders that e.g. installing X3 changed but were originally from "X2" ... so only the latest version was a true tested release version, all other (older) versions turned into some sort of hybrids (not even considering 3rd party software that changed over the years) ...
 
If you want true separate versions, you need two PCs ... use one main PC where you keep the productive Platinum version, use the other PC (any PC will do) to check out new versions ...

The old way was whole lot closer to sxs than the current system.  In practice it worked exactly the way I described.

Rollback really does the same thing but far more efficiently here. If for some reason you mistrust rolling back that's what backups are for.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
We discussed that ad-nauseum last year. Side by side installation actually creates a can of worms with anything that is shared and would also be very confusing for less savvy users. Tech support would also be a nightmare.

The fact that a discussion was continued ad-nauseum doesn't guarantee the correct conclusions were drawn from it
 
No doubt this would need careful design.  Could even be optional such that only those with the greatest concern would want to adopt the approach.
 
Of course the easiest approach for both sides of this is to wait out each release, allowing early adopters to screen.  Then update when the dust settles.  Anderton has been rightfully promoting this idea of a self-regulated update intervals. 
 

You don't see this going on much with other software unless it's very simple for a reason. With respect it would be a nightmare to implement with no real benefit.

FreeFlyBertl
If you want true separate versions, you need two PCs ... use one main PC where you keep the productive Platinum version, use the other PC (any PC will do) to check out new versions .

I do dual boot, you can test on same exact hardware that way.

Drop shared components - that would be better anyway (eg. VST scanner is shared with pre-Platinum installs already, which is really not good).  Disk space is (comparatively) cheap and the shared components aren't huge.