Teds_Studio
I think you even had to sign up to get the "invitation" for early release.  It was on the website somewhere stating to sign up with your email address if you wanted to have a chance at the early release.  I did sign up....but after a day or so I went ahead and purchased it from JRRShop.  Then two days later, I get the email for the early release offer.  I had to decline since I've already paid for it elsewhere.

Hi Ted.  What was the code?  Can't seem to find it again.
 
Thanks.
 
Paul

I had a similar impression to Larry's: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Chance-of-an-Earlier-Release-m3150295.aspx.
I suspect that the longer Cakewalk delays the release to people who pre-ordered, the more of their most loyal customers will become disgruntled customers.
I think Cakewalk could have handled it better. It's reasonable to select 200 random customers to see what breaks, but they could have used a private forum to report issues. None of us would have known or thought much about it. Regardless of good intentions, I don't think it helps when we read all the posts about how great it is, mostly we just want to reach into the monitor and throttle the poster.
 

yeah, as I've purchased every new version immediately as soon as it was available since 2005, and it seemed to be recommended by cakewalk to buy it from a 3rd party this time for some reason, for the 1st time ever I went ahead and purchased from someone other than directly from cakewalk (sweetwater), thinking if I paid for it as soon as possible, I'd be able to get it as soon as anyone. I'm a little annoyed that it's available to some before me, even though I've paid for the Platinum upgrade in full as soon as anyone. I'm more annoyed that it is actually available, i've paidin full, and would have some extra time to start working with it with this long holiday weekend... but I can't... because of this silly little release timing trick/game/quirk played by cake on some of their most traditionally loyal customers. wtf!?

Seems to be a strange way of doing things but hey, we're just the customers. What do we know?

I guess you could get really anal about it and say some of those that were able to get it early, also run professional studios, and thusly were able to "steal" some of their competitor's business clients, just by having the latest and "greatest", unlike their competitors who were forced to twiddle their thumbs, as they watched their customers go across the street to those "randomly selected studios".

I guess you can just about imagine anything you want to nowadays.....  ;-/~

Oh good grief!  The 21st is next Wednesday!  I'm in favor of letting someone else work out the bugs...but that's just me.
 

FWIW, I didn't get it either

I was one of the lucky ones. I signed up for the pre-order and got the email two days later. Yay for me. If you didn't sign up for the pre-order, I don't think you get to complain about this.
 
Considering there were a group of users that got the early access to the product - would you have preferred that they keep quiet about it? I for one was avidly reading the experiences of other folks' installation way before I got the opportunity to join the group. And I haven't been shy about sharing my experiences.
 
A graduated roll-out makes a lot of sense, because this way things are tested in a ramped-up fashion, rather than a "OMG the servers are down" kind of rush. Also, any issues we find (that weren't found in the beta testing period) will be resolved before the rush, hopefully leading to a smoother and better experience for everyone next week.
 
I would have written this even had I not been a participant in the pre-order.

maybe they ran out of stamps to mail out all the software at once??

stickman393
I was one of the lucky ones. I signed up for the pre-order and got the email two days later. Yay for me. If you didn't sign up for the pre-order, I don't think you get to complain about this.

I suspect that everyone complaining about it here signed up.
 

Considering there were a group of users that got the early access to the product - would you have preferred that they keep quiet about it?

Actually, yes. They could have then opened the pre-release forum once everyone had access to the software.
 

A graduated roll-out makes a lot of sense, because this way things are tested in a ramped-up fashion, rather than a "OMG the servers are down" kind of rush. Also, any issues we find (that weren't found in the beta testing period) will be resolved before the rush, hopefully leading to a smoother and better experience for everyone next week.

No problem with ramped up testing, but they could have done it in way that didn't alienate the rest of their customers. Since we don't yet have the software, we have a lot of time to complain about it.