someone offering you a lifetime product for a few hundred dollars, and we don't stop to think (how can they pay developers for the rest of your life with this amount of money.  I smelt a fish back when they offered this garbage.
 
Disgusting.  Truly disgusting.

PFD, apparently.

That has nothing to do with it.  Imagine-Line has offered lifetime updates for as long as they've been around and they are HUGE now, the majority of people using FL hasn't had to pay for it for quite some time now and they're doing great.  Plus from what I've been seeing there has been a huge amount of Sonar users that never did spring for the Lifetime updates either,  plus how many users never upgraded past X1, X2, or X3, they would never have to pay for anything more. 

Yes, we were the usual gullible hopeful idiots. 
 
When Anderton got the boot, I started getting anxious that something dirty was afoot.

how can any company implement such a model?  lifetime updates for so cheap?

I think eyebrows were raised because most were willing (including me) to keep paying yearly. I suspected that the level of upgrades would go down to what it did. The first year was fantastic! And for a company to say "Naw, just pay once and you're good for life." I probably would have jumped myself but had already seen the decline in the montly upgrades. WE were called all sorts of names... Today is not a good day for me. 52yrs old and got my studio just right, for me anyway. Springing for studio one and the studiolive iii, may as well, right? I feel very sorry for those who just paid their money.

I purchased the lifetime updates as soon as it was announced, I don`t regret it either, how could I for only £87.66

Not dumb at all.....at the time, lots of people questioned what was happening.  But the math was really simple: if SONAR lasted for more than a year, the lifetime subscription would pay for itself.  And it did.
 
 

I never thought the lifetime updates were a necessary or smart move for Cakewalk, but there's more sense to it than might initially appear to be. They always said that Platinum users made up a minority of the user base, and I'm guessing the calculation was "we can raise some cash now from long termers, who are the most likely buyers of multiple add-ons, and everyone walks away happy". Sadly, it didn't turn out that way, but I don't think it was either stupid or cynical.

FL Studio has had life time updates for as long as I can remember.