I'd argue a strong case for this update. It might sound anecdotal, but I promise you it's not...
 
The ability to deliver news and update information directly to SONAR customers from inside the application has been a predictable and repetitive conversation for us for many, many years now. It doesn't really take a survey to figure this out, it just takes answering phone calls for more then 30 minutes. Customers have been asking us, directly, "Why doesn't SONAR tell you when an update is available" for years now. I'd question the decision making of anyone at Cakewalk who couldn't see how obvious this was.
 
Fact of the matter is, a multitude of customers have for years been turned off by having to hunt for updates on our website. Many other users also have become aggravated with having to rely on Newsletters for promotions and important information (which are sometimes targeted and/or can result in service providers flagging things as abuse, etc.). Email, as it turns out, is not always the best way to deliver news to everyone who uses your product. This point has been aggressively explained to us by customers for years now. Forum stickies are even worse. So, this request is actually extremely common and backed by years of countless requests and complaints by people who, by their very nature, don't spend a lot of time familiarizing themselves with our website and explaining this on our forum.
 
Like with all things, we had to build up the back-end to support this first and improve everyone's first experience with SONAR. With this being the case, while the back-end devs got their ducks in a row, the SONAR devs took the opportunity to expand upon the idea and make the entire first-impression of SONAR experience much better.
 
It grew from not just a place to receive notifications, but also to provide a better experience with creating new projects, pulling up more fleshed-out project templates, and accessing your favorite and most recent sessions and meta-data more easily then before. The thumbnails and project information are a nice improvement. It also gives us an easier mechanism for delivering relevant instructional videos directly without having to instruct users how to navigate to CakeTV on our website. Even the Quick Tips are a nice addition. We were surprised to learn that when we removed the "Tip of the Day" from SONAR X1, the number of complaints sky-rocketed to the point where our service department had to create "auto-responses" to explain why we didn't want to continue delivering pre-compiled tips that may or may not be irrelevant after changes were made to the products's features with subsequent updates.
 
Each of these things individually might seem silly to anyone even browsing this forum, especially power users, but the point being... customers have been asking us for years to present the most up-to-date information directly to them. It doesn't have to be listed in the Features & Ideas forum for it to be a real legitimate goal. It is, in fact, true that many customers reach out to us through a variety of other means and do not engage on the forum. With that being said, I'd argue the number of times people ask "where did you learn that bit of information" (such as every time an update is released or even with this thread alone http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3275850 ) is an argument for the fact that we're not reaching everyone with the standard methods.
 
I'd encourage anyone interested to spend some time with it and see if your experience is improved. There's more to it then just news, but I personally feel that aspect alone was worth the effort. Log feedback and ideas, as always. If it turns out that this new addition (one of many so far introduced with SONAR 2015 http://www.cakewalk.com/P...Rolling-Updates#start ) is not for you, it can be bypassed. Even still, our hopes are that it is beneficial for the majority of customers.
 
At the end of the day I feel the need to mention that work-done in one area does not mean other areas are being ignored. The bakers behind the scenes here all have different skill-sets and areas of expertise. Some projects have different timelines just due to their nature and the work that must be done prior. We've traditionally been pretty tight-lipped about future updates and we've been trying to do a better job of including some details on our roadmap each month. Announcing this new Start Screen and what it can mean for future improvements to both SONAR's workflow and how we all communicate with one another is another example of how we're trying to improve.