Dear Lord Tim,
 
Sorry, I don't think I'll ever get used to these Aliases...
 
Thank you for a carefully thought out and measured response. It hadn't occurred to me that anyone would be offended by my question and to those I have inadvertently offended I apologise...unreservedly. Thank you, Lord Tim, for pointing out my error.
 
It is clear that my question to CW is being misunderstood by many. I am not criticising you, Bapu or anybody else for the buying decisions you have made. I am sure they are correct. I really appreciate you commenting on my question as you have taken the time to explain your buying decision and your admiration of the Cakewalk brand and the people who work there in order to allay my anxiety. You obviously think I don't share your opinion of the People at CW, in fact I do, and in the past it has been a great company, and I am sure it will be a great one in the future - even with the involvement of Gibson. A company that I have a poor opinion (but that is my own and I will keep it to myself). The people at CW have always been great, if not a little US centric (I regularly remind people in the US that the exchange rate between £ and $ is not 1:1) ☺
 
Mr Borthwick, the CTO of CW, sent me (and admittedly others) an open letter into our email inboxes. Despite my best efforts (Which are not always adequate), I could not find a response mechanism to ask for further clarification. So I put a response in this forum in the hope that a CW employee would bring it to his attention and he would respond to my query. Now it's nice of you to respond to me, and I am sure Bapu feels he is helping, but I was hoping to gain Me Borthwick's attention and garner a response.
 
You and Babu have decided that the lifetime updates are for you. That's great. But I would suggest that Mr Borthwick did not send that email to attract you to take advantage of CW's offer a second time (after all under the terms of the offer that would be impossible), I humbly suggest to you that the email was sent by CW to attract the late adopters into taking the offer. People like me...
 
So, I saw my question was an opportunity for CW to convince me to scrap 10 months of investment and drop them a bit more cash - early - just by telling me (and the rest of the customer base) why the offer was limited. They don't have to do so, and as Bapu so succinctly pointed out. I don't have to take up CW's offer. For me, rewarding the customer base is a little hard to accept because they are in business. In all models of business, you make an offer to a target group of potential buyers and they take it up in a contract - or they do not.
 
That is why I really liked your TV analogy. Indeed, in retail you often see offers where items are marked down as a loss leader to get customers into the store and they return to a higher price at a later date. But to be attractive to the customer base you need to appeal to people who want to by a TV - and if you are not in the market - you don't notice the offer. (you know another one will come around eventually). That is why your analogy is so great. It sums up the whole discussion. No one is trying to disparage CW. No-one is having a go at those who have taken the offer up. Its just some of us need a little more nudging to convince us we "need" the offer and we are inviting CW to expand the information they have offered.
 
But, (and I know it's bad grammar to start a sentence with But - however, I have little or no education and I am just trying to communicate), But - it seems that I have failed in my objective for clarification and have attracted Babu's ridicule and wasted your time by encouraging you to encourage me to purchase the offer. I apologise to you Sir, and I thank you again for taking your valuable time in an effort to help me.
 
I shall now retire from this thread - hurt, bloodied and humbled.
 
Kind regards
 
Marko
Entertaining the few since 1962
Remember "Reprehensible behaviour" s always Reprehensible and Perception IS reality.

Beste Mark
Quote:  So, I saw my question was an opportunity for CW to convince me to scrap 10 months of investment and drop them a bit more cash - early - just by telling me (and the rest of the customer base) why the offer was limited. Quote:
 
My opinion is that you are seeing this wrong. In the first place you are not scrapping 10 months of payment. If you pay monthly you would have 2 payments left before you can keep Sonar as your own. 
 
Cakewalk is offering for a limited time a lifetime upgrade at a very low price. After the end of August the price will go back to normal and will convert to a yearly/monthly paying system.
 
You now have the chance to buy the lifetime upgrade and not make another payment any more. You would also not have to pay the last 2 payments in order to own Sonar. In my view , this would be the best option for you if you want to continue with Sonar.
As far as the e-mails go, Cakewalk has a database and sends the e-mails through their database. It is not that they are targeting you in any  way. This is the easy way to send e-mails as far as the company goes.
 
In the end it will be your decision as to whether you upgrade or not. I have upgraded because I am on a pension now so I wont have the money every month/year to upgrade. I had the money now and I upgraded.
 
I hope this will make some sense to you. If not , I tried.
 
God bless
Danny

markoburrows
Mr Borthwick, the CTO of CW, sent me (and admittedly others) an open letter into our email inboxes. Despite my best efforts (Which are not always adequate), I could not find a response mechanism to ask for further clarification. So I put a response in this forum in the hope that a CW employee would bring it to his attention and he would respond to my query. Now it's nice of you to respond to me, and I am sure Bapu feels he is helping, but I was hoping to gain Me Borthwick's attention and garner a response.
 
So, I saw my question was an opportunity for CW to convince me to scrap 10 months of investment and drop them a bit more cash - early - just by telling me (and the rest of the customer base) why the offer was limited. They don't have to do so, and as Bapu so succinctly pointed out. I don't have to take up CW's offer. For me, rewarding the customer base is a little hard to accept because they are in business. In all models of business, you make an offer to a target group of potential buyers and they take it up in a contract - or they do not.
 

 
Hi Mark,
 
Thanks for your message. The purpose of my letter was not so much for marketing but to bring some clarity into the underlying reasons why we adopted rolling updates and lifetime updates. Any change brings many questions from people and its often difficult to address them all even though the FAQ at the top of this forum clarifies some of them. 
 
Anyway I'm puzzled why you consider us offering lifetime updates is equivalent to "convince me to scrap 10 months of investment and drop them a bit more cash". Are you paying monthly?
 
Keep in mind that the monthly payment option is solely there for two reasons:
- to have an affordable way to make non consecutive payments. i.e. for user who don't necessarily want to plunk down money to own the product
- to allow users who want to own the product a way to make incremental payments. i.e. like lease to own.
 
If you are in the above category then you implicitly do not own Platinum yet since you have not completed 12 consecutive months of payment. As such if you need lifetime membership you pay the standard price. 
On the other hand, users who purchased an annual membership upfront this year, get discounted pricing on a lifetime update.
 
We're offering lifetime updates for users who have committed to using SONAR for a long time. i.e. if you even use it two years you have covered the extra cost. If you plan on using SONAR for a year or more its an attractive option to go with lifetime updates since you never need to worry about keeping the software up to date. If on the other hand you prefer going month to month for any reason then you can keep doing so.
 
Not sure if I answered your question but hope this clarifies things a bit.

I think (and I'm obviously not speaking for CW here, just observing) that the offer is limited for the usual reason offers are limited. If they're open-ended, there is less incentive to buy because you can always get the same deal later. Sales and special offers are an attempt to create artificial scarcity and trigger the impulse to buy based on the fact that this offer *might* not happen again, or soon, or exactly at the time we want it to. But it's here now, and if it seems like a good offer (it does to me), then now is the time to do it. If not, not - there will be other offers, other sales, other opportunities. I would personally be surprised if this is the last or only time CW makes the lifetime offer, if it works well for them they will probably repeat it (again: if not, then not). But making it open-ended would take the pressure off and thus be less effective. So it goes. 

To all good day,
Just wanted to clarify that 'lifetime' is offered to me. I own pro. The price was 199. After pm to cake found that the price (which I am good until August) was inclusive of bumping me up to splat, then applying the lifetime price. So, 100 to upgrade to plat, then 99 to get lifetime. Still don't need plat, but would be nice to have lifetime on pro which is not available. Don't know why, since pro is carrying forward. But still a great deal. Hope this doesn't add confusion.
MJ

Hey Marko - cheers for the nice words, and don't worry about titles here. I answer to most swear words!  (Occasionally "Tim" for some odd reason? I don't know why either.)
 
Just wanted to clarify that there was no offence taken on my part and I certainly didn't mean any towards you either - sorry if it came across that way! You have to understand that there was a LOT of misunderstandings and, sadly, trolling that came after the big announcement, and a lot of that FUD was being trotted out and confusing legitimate owners looking to upgrade, so you're likely to get a few people who DO get how it works explaining things to people who haven't quite gotten what it's all about yet.
 
I think Noel summed it up perfectly so I won't say any more, but hopefully you find a path forward that works best for you. It's good to have options. 

Dear Mr Borthwick,
 
Thank you so much for responding to my submission to your forum. I had decided to let this go, but Cowboydan (Still struggle with these aliases) sent such a nice comment I wanted to mark it as useful.
 
Both Cowboydan and yourself have convinced me that I am indeed an idiot and unable to communicate clearly. I did say "to convince me to scrap 10 months of investment" by which I mean, I upgraded to the Annual Platinum two months ago and therefore have 10 months to run. In my simple mind that means that if I upgrade again now - I will "waste" the 10 months I have yet to run before my subscription has competed. I am sorry for the confusion.
 
Without causing further confusion - (and I understand that as an upgrader of only two months and not having renewed that subscription I am not eligible for any discount - that is not where I am coming from), my concern/anxiety/need for clarification comes from the "limited" nature of the offer. August 31st looms and I am a pessimist.
 
I can understand that you want to offer updates to people who have committed to Sonar for a long time, and I would indeed like to consider myself one of those people, having moved from X3, through Artist, and then Professional and now Platinum. That to me is a commitment. If you had advertised Lifetime updates as a Platinum+ option without a deadline I would have possibly just jumped and paid the money up to you. But there is this deadline; and I wanted to know a little more about it - because my brain creates scenarios. I have imagination and sometimes it is a curse...
 
So, If you see my point and would be good enough to elaborate on the statement you made in your last paragraph to encompass the decision to utilise a deadline I would be very grateful
 
Yours sincerely
 
 
 
Mark Burrows

My feeling, at least about the time limit for the 4Life offer, is that it certainly will not go on as a permanent fixture because then Cakewalk would be cutting themselves off from ongoing income from the product. It seems more likely they want to get a cash bump to cover costs for Mac Development.
 
Cakewalk has come out with some pretty nice offers from time to time and I think they will continue to appear. It might be that there will be another 4Life offer in the future, but I would not expect it to be soon. Perhaps it will appear when the Mac version is rolled out because that could be attractive to new users especially in a software world where other DAWs are requiring monthly or annual payments for support and upgrade.

Hi Mark
The deadline would seem to be the right thing to do as Cakewalk is a business. By that I am saying that Cakewalk cannot give everyone a lifetime update for the price that they are offering now. They would be soon out of business.
As far as the 10 months go, you could see it as trading your 10 months of Sonar for the lifetime update and never have to pay any more for the program. Every year has been $199 per year or you get lucky with a discount at the time to upgrade. For you it would be $199 one time for the rest of Sonar's life. Life expectancy for Sonar software would be at least 10-15 years. Unlike food, you don't have to refrigerate it and it wont go bad.
It is your choice.
 
Danny

Another reason for doing limited-time offers is to test the waters and gauge reactions. They could decide based on the results to never do it again, do it sometimes, reserve it as a special thing...who knows. Cakewalk is very much into finding out what resonates with their customers as well as what attracts new customers.