Wow! This thread is very interesting! I really liked to read these comments above, especially the very realistic and neutral view of Craig, but also some of the critical voices.
I worked many years as software developer myself (unfortunately not for music software). So I really understand the difficulty and challenge to create software without bugs. But on the other hand I experienced a lot of situations where either managers did not want to invest some effort to improve software after its launch or developers preferred just to implement new fancy stuff instead of improving their former work. I think, regrettably it is true like mentioned above that today's software customers are used to deal with plenty of shortcomings, because the law is more on the side of the companies. But nevertheless I think that it is the customer's duty to remind the software companies (managers and developers) that they should also improve their existing products, surely considering what is possible in real life!
It is true that it costs money to make a software more bug-free, but on the other hand sometimes the available money is wasted for too many features. I am a little concerned that Sonar is going into excessive functionality and I know very well that this can spoil a software. There is no all-in-one DAW suitable for every purpose.
So like Craig mentioned, I hope that Cakewalk is making the correct tradeoffs, because I like Sonar!