CakeAlexS
My view is there is enough important and outstanding issues to warrent X3F. X4 will bring it's own unique set of issues as with all new software. I don't regard service releases as 'free' in regards to fixing faults, nor would I generally expect to pay for new software in order to fix bugs.. What Cakewalk have been doing with X3 has been great but there is still a lot to do, I do hope they will keep it up. Having this sort of commitment shows us how Gibson/Cakewalk will handle future releases can only improve sales if done right (so far so good).

I agree with all of this, but my money is on x4 - buy I'll be back on board if there's x3f

Well I'm in the " till X4 group." But with the understanding that a lot of these outstanding issues are addressed.

And why do people quote long threads? Why? Edit out everything except the info you are responding too.

In regards to X4 we don't know the release date, we are assuming it will be the same as always but we don't know that. I'm probably not going to buy X4 until X4C comes out based on past experience, but I will maintain an open mind depending on how well it is received in the forums after one or two months have expired (the "love in" period). Regardless that's at least a year to live with X3E's outstanding problems from my angle perhaps a lot longer if there is any change from the perceived normal schedule. Not to take away that X3E is the best X release so far by a mile.
 
Cheers..

Grem
And why do people quote long threads? Why? Edit out everything except the info you are responding too.
 

 
They're probably posting from a smartphone. 

One practical consideration is QC time. I don't know Cakewalk's plans re updates or whatever, but what I do know is that if there was an update now, it would take time to QC. Then if/when a new version comes out, there would need to be another round of QC. The way I've seen most other software companies work, and I doubt Cakewalk is radically different, is it's a lot faster to fold old updates into a new version and QC everything at once.

Any release of any software should have QA time just like it takes developer time. If QA does automated testing it's much less of an issue. Most of the code should be reusable in X4.

I think a better point would be that there's not much point in fixing something that is going to be rewritten and redesiged from scratch from a project management perspective (let's say drum maps get a complete redesign in X4, what's the point in fixing old code?). However from the customer perspective they just want something that works without many visible bugs which they can use right now and are not really concerned with the software development life cycle.

If the attention they are paying to X3 and even what they did with X1 had been applied to X2 there would not have been those ugly little Beeps spazz outs near the end of that cycle. I just wanted to know they were at least TRYING to fix stuff. In retrospect I think the Baker's hands were tied due to the previous owners. This slew of updates, even when the program was already working a million times better almost from the beginning, is highly encouraging. Seems like it's mostly obscure and/or easily workaroundable* quirks at this point.
 
*yay! new werds... lol

I'd check the list again. Many are not trivial and plenty have been around for a long time. Yup there are many that can be worked around but the tradeoff between severity vs quantity vs available workarounds is still too high IMHO. Still it's so much better than X2 right now and yes Cakewalks performance recently has been more than encouraging.

Well one thing I've learned throughout my recent headfirst dive into the computer world and something that I learned long ago about life in general... nothing is perfect so stick with what works best and diversify when it doesn't.
 
If only I had applied that philosophy to my love life as a young man. ;-)

Yup it's still better than Pro Tools :)