Just wanted to hear others thoughts on the start screen enhancements in this months update?   Maybe I'm missing something.  The start screen was the first thing that I turned off in Platinum.  Now it sounds like it's heading more in the direction of a Cakewalk storefront, I'll probably be even less likely to use it.  

Yup, looks like advertising to me.

I too was surprised at the amount of effort they are putting into it...

...and talking about it as a learning tool, news, and demos? Very geared almost completely towards new users.

I turned it off immediatly as well seeing no benefit for me.

For the first time I've held off an an early release as i want to hear some reports... just in case. A bit of "fear" to be forced into using it crept into my mind.

I was recently bitten by another manufactirer's update that caused the loss of most important features and then discovered it was not a bug. The features will not return and there is no way for me to revert.

It would destroy me if somethng of this nature happened with Sonar... I'm preferring to believe in The Bakers, but fear is a powerful motivator... 👽

I also turned off the Start Screen as soon as it was implemented.

Sorry Cakewalk peeps...

+1 to list of people that haven't seen the start screen since shortly after it's inception. Not much of a fan of in app advertising either, so I can't see the 'upgrade' convincing me to turn it back on. On top of that the studio DAW is offline, so having the start screen active there just slows down startup.

When it first came out, I had turned it off right away like you guys.
 
But then I gave it a try and now I really like it. When they introduced the custom picture / auto-screen shot display it made it more attractive, but what really made the difference for me was when I took a little time, kicked out all Cakewalk projects templates and set up about 8 custom ones for typical project starting points and my external gear. Since then the start screen is the quick way into old and new projects ...
 
What I did not like was that the recent project list was rather short (I think they changed it now) and when you kicked out some projects from the list when moving/deleting the project files, the ones later did not come back (too short a list of recent projects in the background/registry)
 
With the DAW offline unless I update, I don't have to worry about advertising crap (I mean there is so much advertising on any screen these days that I meanwhile mentally completely filter out ALL of it and don't see it)
 

Start screen?.   Just kidding, I know it's there, I just didn't enable it since its inception.  Also, through the analytics function, the Bakers would have an idea of how many have it enabled.

promidi
Also, through the analytics function, the Bapkers would have an idea of how many have it enabled.

Probably not. At best really skewed analytics because you can can expect analytics to be turned off even more frequently than the start screen (I turn off any calling home that developers do not properly hide)

I don't see any difference accept it looks better. The Discover tab is better than how they had it before.  This can be ignored and still use the start screen as always.  Plus it lets us see at a glance what is new in the CW world. All at the users discretion. There is nothing intruding into our workflow. I don't see any problem here. Its cleaner and more sophisticated looking. CW has done a good job on it.    

I'm with John on this.
It's not intrusive, if you/I don't use that tab. Nice to see any news, if I so desire.
All the best.