i've used steam for ~10 years, it's a very mature, stable delivery platform; it has an offline mode (you don't need to be logged on all the time) and you can backup your apps locally, to avoid downloading them again... having said that, i only use it for slaughtering zombies, etc

Leadfoot
@n13L5- Love that hat!

ty!  I wish I still had it...

tlw
Downsides of Steam:
1. You have to be logged into Steam via their client all the time - as in on line. [...]

It has an offline mode, and unless you want to run an installation, you never need to leave offline mode.
 
Believe me, I was very critical of Steam at first, mainly because it it messes with consumer rights to sell or gift a used game to someone else, once they got bored with a game. That's what the legal concept of 'first sale' is for, so that corporations (artificial person) can't interfere with what a "consumer" (human being) does with his Product once its bought and paid for.
 
Of course new legal constructs are developed every day to deprive human beings of their former rights in this new, awful millennium of bank and corporate controlled governments, where there are revolving doors between certain corporations and the federal government, enabling corporations like Monsanto to write their own laws.  Remember, patents on living things were expressly forbidden, till Monsanto managed to get supreme court chairs for 5 of their lawyers, who promptly changed that, so Monsanto is now free to corrupt all life on earth with irresponsible genetic hacks for profit. Corruption reigns supreme.
 
So, I've calmed down about Valve's little breach, there's bigger fish looking to fry us.  And Valve is doing a good thing at the moment: moving their platform to Linux and pulling along much other software with them.  I think that's good, cause Microsoft is getting more conniving by the day.

Sounds like it's the way software like DAWs should have been released from the start! It also sounds like games should've been the LAST format to be released this way since the trade/resale value....

You do not need to re-install full setups of Sonar at all!
 
Just do a custom install and "cherry-pick" what you want, I once installed ONLY some studioware from an older install - all of about 200kb! Nothing else got installed! So to cite that one needs to run  full installation to get a particular plug is a furphy imo.

joden
You do not need to re-install full setups of Sonar at all!
 
Just do a custom install and "cherry-pick" what you want, I once installed ONLY some studioware from an older install - all of about 200kb! Nothing else got installed! So to cite that one needs to run  full installation to get a particular plug is a furphy imo.

Thats all good and well, if you can still find those old disks after several times of moving.
 
If you need to download / order replacement disks, you'll be hard pressed to download just some soft synths you loved and spent hours and hours figuring out  ;-)
 
I'm not saying anyone should be forced to use Steam.  But it would be a help to some of us...

Cake should have their own online store model. I should be able to download a plugin, update/patch and products (like windows update) without every having to leave Cake (except when an app restart is required).

I don't know enough about Steam except my kid uses it for games.  Seems like it's *always* updating etc and snarking around in the background.
 
If it is unobtrusive and can *really* be completely SHUTOFF when *I* want then it might be ok as a place to keep your software installs organized etc. 
 
But the SECOND it decides to change to force me to be 'logged in' etc like a dongle or some sort of challenge response or ??? whatever the marketing geniuses cook up - I pull the plug and live with what I have on a local PC.  That would mean abandoning any software company that throws in with them.
 
 

n13L5

joden
You do not need to re-install full setups of Sonar at all!
 
Just do a custom install and "cherry-pick" what you want, I once installed ONLY some studioware from an older install - all of about 200kb! Nothing else got installed! So to cite that one needs to run  full installation to get a particular plug is a furphy imo.

Thats all good and well, if you can still find those old disks after several times of moving.
 
If you need to download / order replacement disks, you'll be hard pressed to download just some soft synths you loved and spent hours and hours figuring out  ;-)
 
I'm not saying anyone should be forced to use Steam.  But it would be a help to some of us...

Yeah I guess - all my Sonar data is stored on backup drives/DVD's so no sweat to re-install any component. I use Steam (not for storage though - only because I have to run it to play games), but tbh, and generally speaking (ie not just Steam),  I think folks are becoming too reliant on "cloud" storage - I prefer the advantage of being able to access any backup or any program/data from my own "always available" resources.

joden I think folks are becoming too reliant on "cloud" storage - I prefer the advantage of being able to access any backup or any program/data from my own "always available" resources.

I completely agree with you on that. I use 3 local backup drives and a cloud backup called crashplan just as an extra safety. But I failed to backup software disks like Cakewalk etc...  And when I need the disks, of course, I can't find them.
 
I stopped buying Google's Nexus gear the moment they started dictating to manufacturers not to put MicroSD card slots into them, in order to push people into their cloud.
 
You never know when censoring the mainstream media isn't enough for them anymore and they'll shut off the internet under some pretense. Aside from that possibility, I just don't feel like streaming my music from some server, if I can just play it from my device. Its a waste of bandwidth and if bandwidth didn't matter anymore, then providers wouldn't constantly be grousing about the cost of providing it, trying to institute rules to prioritize big corporate content over everything else.