The Grass is always Greener... Not Always...

I was saddened by the announcement that no further development will take place on the fine Cakewalk software products. I've been a customer for some time, going back to the "Pro audio" days, and even had exposure to the very early days when it was just MIDI.
 
Now, in interest of full disclosure, I am a semi-professional musician, and pay the bills during the day as a software engineer. I pay attention to stability, performance, features, and of course, ease of use. For whatever reason, I found the Cakewalk interfaces easy to use. (Sonar, Instruments, effects) Generally, the software has been stable, and performs well on various platforms. I've never had a situation where files have been corrupt and lost work.
 
I've heard a lot of noise about competing products, Pro Tools specifically. I wondered to my self, does any serious producer/engineer/studio use Sonar, or do they all use Pro Tools? Well, let's see what happens when this semi-pro ventures into the so-called "serious" or "professional" world of Digital Audio Workstations.
 
Where do I start? How about install/licensing? Sonar has a straight forward simple way of licensing and securing their software. Avid, not so much. After install of Pro Tools, I have a tray application, and a couple of "helper" applications. Do I really need network traffic while working on my latest platinum hit? I gotta wonder how the big studios put up with that. Anyone that has worked with DAWs will know controlling network access/activity is critical. I have two processes consuming about 200MB just on boot, without even invoking the application. 
 
Next would be the memory footprint. Compared to Sonar, the footprint to run Pro Tools is more like a tank track than a foot print. Starting the program spawns additional processes, not to mention the aforementioned tray application. So in an "apples to apples" comparison, Sonar can start up and initialize in a few seconds, while I've been able to write this paragraph while waiting for Pro Tools to come up. "Pro Tools (Not Responding)". It spawned two additional processes, while eating an additional 400MB+ just to initialize. It is still not up, nor do I think it will ever come up at this point.
 
So what's my point? After having Sonar "discontinued", I thought "oh well, time to move on". The problem is where to go? So far all I've seen as an alternative is not an alternative; not even close. 
 
Business is business, and if Cakewalk can't survive then there is nothing that can be done. However, software doesn't rust and I'll continue to use Sonar as long as my hardware and O/S will let me. You should consider the same.