I've been using Twelve Tone Cakewalk versions since 1987.  In The Past, updates occurred as a single event, PA7 to PA8, to PA8.5, to X1 ....  Following these events, sad to say, some things weren't there anymore, or were there but were expected to be someplace else.  Recently V-vocal and Lexicon Pantheon (I think) are examples.  Also, the work-flow was different and required studying the [currently] 1700 page User's Guide and buying a Garrigus' tome.  So anytime I moved from one version to the next, it was often with trepidation, care, and paranoia. 
 
In the new "model" updates are going to occur "fluidly".  Does that mean I turn my computer off, wake up in the morning, and things that used to work don't work, are gone, or don't work in the same way they did last night?  That scares me.

yevster
I've trash-talked Sonar quite a bit for stability issues, but S1 is way worse. First, projects take forever to load, as it seems to load every plugin (and every sampleset within each plugin) one at a time. Second, its autosave is modal, so while your project is being saved, you have absolutely no control over your DAW. If it's playing a project, it will keep playing, and you can't stop it. Third, and this is the worst one: it is the worst-performing, most unstable DAW I've ever used. Sometimes it gets into a state where it will no longer allow me to add effects to the project (Pro version). And the audio engine starts to sputter under far less load than it would take a Sonar project or a Cubase project, even before all the performance improvements in Cubase 8. And what really bites is that after two years worth of fixes and incremental updates, these issues still have not been addressed.
 

weird, that's almost the polar opposite of my own s1 experience

I know, I'm a bug magnet on any DAW other than Cubase. :)

I know, I'm a bug magnet on any DAW other than Cubase. :)

yevster
I've trash-talked Sonar quite a bit for stability issues ... projects take forever to load ... its autosave is modal no control over your DAW ... most unstable DAW I've ever used. Sometimes it gets into a state where it will no longer allow me to add effects to the project (Pro version). And the audio engine starts to sputter under far less load than it would take a Sonar project or a Cubase project, even before all the performance improvements in Cubase 8. And what really bites is that after two years worth of fixes and incremental updates, these issues still have not been addressed.
 

Before I moved to 64 bit mode and upgraded my RAM to 12 gb, I used to run into the problems (well, some of them) you describe.  I don't use Autosave, I save manually, and I save to "versions", as in Poopyhead v01.cwp, Poopyhead v02.cwp ... because I don't trust the computer to be able to tell when I really have something to save, or when I have totally screwed up everything (i.e., autopunch was on and I just destroyed the vocal tracks).  If I don't remember to Save judiciously, then it is MY fault; however, if the computer overwrites something not intended, it is a distinct possibility that I will smash monitors and generally flip out and become a serial killer. 
 
Previously, there was a limit to the number of effects ... well actually, I could add more but they didn't work, and as the computer tried to workaround by moving data to Virtual Memory (aka, the hard drive), Sonar would click, pop, stutter, become unusable, and tend to lock-up/crash.  The workaround was to Freeze a bunch of the tracks. 
 
As far as "take forever to load", 60 some tracks of 24 bit 48kHz audio is a LOT of MBytes that has to be stuffed into memory ... and organized for recording/playback.  That will take some "time" no matter what DAW you are using unless the DAW is leaving the data on the harddrive ... which seems dumb.
Now, in my new expanded RAM world, although I've never used more than 4.5GB RAM in any Project so far, I don't have any of those problems.  Those extra 0.7GB of RAM seem the indispensable tidbits.  Does S3 crash now and then?  Uh, yeah.  It amazes me that it works at all !!!  That said, it seems the crashes I experience (not very often mind you) are somehow related to those times I get all excited and start clicking too many things while too many things are going on.  Or maybe its instigated when rude Kaspersky decided to do a RootKit scan in the middle of a session (and my fault because I didn't bypass Kaspersky load on startup).  Microsoft Word 2007 crashes, so does IE10 (a lot!!!!).  Computer software crashes. 
 

From my own experience with my friends copy of S1 on his computer (i7 16gig ram), the things yevster said are actually very true; the exact same problems were occurring with my friends situation using that DAW.
 
 
If yevster were to tell us his system specs, that might add weight to his argument.