And in case anyone doesn't believe what I said in post #169, five of the largest music software companies in this industry - Digidesign, Sonic Foundry, Steinberg, Emagic, and Cakewalk - had to be acquired by a larger company to carry on.
 

What are you talking about Craig!

Post #169. Edited to fix. Posted immediately after posting #169 but there were already other comments posted.

charlyg
You have the ability to keep as much as you want in the red.

That is certainly true when new function appears as separately selectable components.  But even in those releases, there is new function added to the core program, such as the ARA enhancements to support the drum replacer.
 
I'm simply suggesting that while hobbyists may enjoy "playing with the cute new kittens" every month, people who are more serious about recording (and I'm not in that camp) would probably appreciate a separation of new function from bug fixes.  The 3-month cycle I outlined would seem to be a compromise that meets the needs of both groups.
 
The reality is that there really aren't many in that later camp (using Sonar for serious commercial production), so this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  The new gadget-of-the-month attracts hobbyists and is off-putting to the commercial users.
 
In reality, that might be the right marketing decision.  Gibson may have concluded that Sonar cannot really compete for the serious user and has a very loyal, enthusiastic base of hobbyists.  Because I am not a commercial user (95% of the time,) I can do OK with the current model.  I am simply pointing out that this model is biased toward hobbyists and experimenters.  Nothing wrong with that.  It really might be the best marketing niche for Sonar in a very crowded industry.
 
===
 
And I should add, a significant amount of the monthly content is in add-ons and scripts that clearly have no impact on the base product stability.  There is no reason why these things couldn't continue to be added in the monthly cycle.

OT:
 
I had an uncle Everett.
Meanie.
 
 

Anderton
Post #169. Edited to fix. Posted immediately after posting #169 but there were already other comments posted.

Still lost, no one is bashing Gibson here!

cparmerlee
 The new gadget-of-the-month attracts hobbyists and is off-putting to the commercial users.
 

Not at all. Some of those gadgets-of-the-month are extremely appealing to commercial users. I used drum replacer (to deal with a poorly-tracked kick drum) yesterday on two mixes that have been signed off by the band today. I was hoping it would go that smoothly, but if it hadn't, I'd have rolled back the update, and took a different approach.
 
Honestly, I think the ability to roll back has completely solved this issue. I used to only do updates when there was a couple of days downtime between large-ish projects. Now I can do them whenever I feel like, and if a problem arises, I can roll back.
 
 

Kamikaze
No one is bashing Gibson here!

 
+1 here. There is no doubt it's been a change for the better, just needs to be even better (yup I know we are a demanding bunch).

John T
Honestly, I think the ability to roll back has completely solved this issue.

How do you do that?  On my system the command center gets chopped off on the right and there is no way I can stretch the window to see the whole thing.  Just another of those bugs that I would rather have fixed than to get new function.  :)  Is there a rollback command somewhere on the right side of that screen?  What else am I missing?

If you right-click on the items in the connected products list, then anything that has a previous version will have a "rollback" option in the drop down list. You can even select which version, not just the previous one.