My turn! A few comments.
First of all, I'm not
that important in the Cakewalk scheme of things. I helped put the acquisition together, and they welcome my input, but they welcomed my input before they were part of Gibson. I've been at Gibson for over a year, and my gig involves working with all the divisions - the four guitar divisions, Gibson Pro Audio, TASCAM, Cakewalk, and an...upcoming surprise. I don't have anything to do with the consumer electronics side of things, which is probably a smart move
Second, Noel IS a genius, but he's not the only one at Cakewalk who is.
Third, I'll never diss someone who has this much passion for the product. I do think, though, that many of the OP's negative comments are based on not knowing the X-series that well. It IS different. I hated Take Lanes for about two days, until I'd worked with them enough to realize there was some serious genius going on under the hood.
Fourth, on balance I find the X-series
far superior to what came before. However, I did have quite a learning curve before I came to that conclusion. I admire Cakewalk's courage to essentially come out with a totally different DAW with the belief that it would lead to greater things in the future. I think X3 shows that their thinking ahead has paid off.
The bottom line is I can gauge a DAW only by how productive I am. In over 50 years of playing music professionally, I have never been as productive as I have since the X-series came out. Although I currently have no interest in releasing my music commercially (hey, I still haven't been paid royalties for music I did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s - sort of a trifecta of accounts receivables), I continue to play live and record, with the results appearing in my YouTube channel. Not only has the quantity increased since the X-series, so has the quality. And for gigs were I do make money from what I do in the studio, I'm more productive in less time.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, otherwise there would be only one DAW in the world. I'm a very satisfied customer, and so are many other Cakewalk users who stuck with the company during the difficult times that preceded the X3 launch. Those difficult times are behind us, and the overwhelmingly positive acceptance of X3 - including from people who switched from other programs and voted with their dollars - has a lot to do with that.
Meanwhile, writing lengthy letters addressed to me will have no practical value in making any of the changes you'd like to see. I know Cakewalk pays attention to feature requests because I've seen many of them incorporated. If enough people want something, and it's doable, Cakewalk will put it in the queue of priorities.
Cakewalk is a small company with a very dedicated group of people. They have to balance several different levels of reality, and I commend them for doing as good a job as I think is humanly possible - and then some.