YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
 
Buying one magazine is not similar to purchasing a Sonar renewal. The reasonable likeness is to purchasing a year's subscription.  Which is what you do when you purchase most ALL software. These are version subscriptions.
 
I have a bunch of programs that I have not upgraded cuz the current version works for what I purchased it for. These programs include  a number of Sony programs that have NOT been updated. I may purchase upgrades if they provide usefulness.
 
CW's history has been about selling version subscriptions: get all updates until the next version is released for purchase. This has averaged about 14 months. (I think it was sonar 4 that was released in the spring, could have been s5??? and of course the 2 year wait for????)
 
 

If you are going to use my example, please quote correctly and not paraphrase a strawman version to suit your needs. I stated very clearly that no matter how many magazines you buy there is still a difference between purchasing something regularly and subscribing. Sometimes that difference makes no difference in how you use the product. I admit it is a semantic difference but still a fact. I used to buy the newspaper to read on the bus daily and that still did not make me a subscriber.

Also, I'm not one that is up in arms over this anyway. I have commented that an adobe style model would not work with cakewalk and have discussed some of the pros and cons regarding that model as it pertains to Adobe. I think the wild speculation is hilarious over a question but participate since it is a topic of conversation and I happenn to be one of the people using the Adobe model.

kitekrazy1

 Some of the older Adobe products are free from their website.  You can get an older version of Audition and Photoshop from them.  I wonder if their new business model of subscription base has a lot to do with losing their partnership with Apple.  

No offense, but this is absolutely false. This rumor has been dispelled many times. It originally popped up a couple years ago when adobe accidently made a link public meant for people who ALREADY owned CS2 to download files. Adobe does not give away any of these programs free. Most supposed "OEM" versions of older versions ( if not all) are cleverly packaged pirated versions. Adobe simply does not offer pre-cloud versions free or commercially.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/download-adobe-cs2-applications-for-free/


One of manyarticles dispelling that myth. Adobe had a page once dispelling it too.

Cough, internet subscription, cough :-)
 
Sorry, playing devil's advocate a bit here, but it's not uncommon for us all to only get a service when we are subscribing to it: software is different to some extent, but not radically so.
 
From a business perspective (as a purchaser of serviecs/items not a provider), I'd much rather have a lot of services paid for on subscription rather than out of capital: it makes budgeting easier as well as flexing up and down during good and bad times, and there are often tax benefits too, and in some cases I can easily shift responsibility to the provider and not be worried about obsolescence (eg. if leasing hardware).
 
Again, slightly different for (home) software uses, but not radically.

Paul P
Cakewalk's openness is always welcome and makes it easy to figure out how our needs and desires interact with yours.  However, there seems to be one aspect of all this that isn't getting much consideration, and that is the buy once and live with it for a long time scenario. 

If Cakewalk disappeared and nothing more happened with X3e, I would continue to make music with it. I don't encounter show-stopper bugs in what I do, just occasional annoyances...but I encounter that in all software, so that sets my expectations.
 
If what you have works, you can keep using it. If you want to buy a new version, I would assume Cakewalk is realistic about recognizing bugs will surface after a product release, and provide some way to offer users fixes for "show-stopper" bugs. There's no question X3 had some issues, but by the time X3e rolled around, there was justification to SONAR veterans saying they felt it was the most stable release yet.
 
What's more likely is that you won't encounter problems going forward with Sonar, but from plug-ins that are yet to be developed and operating systems that don't exist yet. Dealing with those scenarios requires development work, which doesn't come free. I can't imagine a scenario where a company making software today will be issuing free fixes for products that were released in, say, 2013 in order to retain Windows 12 compatibility.
 
Just FYI - one of the reasons why you're seeing less development of "pro" iOS apps is because companies I've talked to (not including CW FWIW) are tired of having to update the program every time Apple makes some slight change to iOS, yet customers expect the update to be free. They simply can't afford to operate that way.

The best news I've seen yet is in Noel's post. I always wondered what happened to the "quickfix" idea, which I thought was brilliant. If CW is putting emphasis on how to do that really right, that's cool regardless of how the software is sold.
 

Anderton
 
 
......I really hope Cakewalk finishes the forum-to-brain download adapter in time for X4.

Craig... now that was darned funny!!!!

The quickfix thing was fine in principle but it caused problems for support since despite its simplicity, some users were making mistakes, didn't know how to rollback etc, so it caused some confusion. Software distribution can be quite complex when you take into account redistributables, OS versions, localization, etc. For a system to do this it has to be more thorough with the back end infrastructure to support it and requires buy in from all departments in the company.
 

Paul P
Sonar to me has still not met my expectation of buy it and learn to live with it, though X3 may be very close (the sustain pedal issue has me worried).  
 

I've said it before *all* software has bugs. Most users just never run into them :) But this issue is a perfect example of where the classic software distribution model fails. It would be way too expensive for us to consider doing an update for just that single issue the way things are structured for us today. Its not as simple as building a fix and releasing it. The version has to be tested on N operating systems, different languages, there are release management considerations, support, etc that all get involved. One reason we are rethinking this is precisely to address one off problems like that one.

It's soon 11/1 --- The Day When They Will Introduce Sonar X4 --- so I've polished my credit card and cleaned the pipes up to the internet for a speedy download... I'm ready!!!
 

No, wait, it'll be actually out later this year... whatta bummer...