I have a real bone to pick with Steinberg and the current release system.
Overall, I have been happy with the current update scheme. Because, again overall, it has resulted in a -much- more stable product than back in the day (ie. back before SX4-5 when they started revamping everything).
However (you knew there was a ‘however’ coming) what -really- GRINDS at me is the looooooooooong list of very tiny, but VERY useful FEATURE REQUESTS which have been around for over a DECADE–requests that have had literally -hundreds- of ‘asks’. Even if you didn’t see the post counter next to a user’s name, you’d know they were new here because you see them ask for the -same- darned things over and over and over shortly after they get Cubase.
These are NOT big, sexy things. They are -small- projects such as LOCK LOCATORS or COLOUR ENTIRE TRACK or TRIPLET GRID or minor tasks on the various Editors that are, nevertheless, -tremendous- time savers for power users.
Now, in the past, SB would tend to throw lots and lots of such improvements into each update. And it was a two-edged sword. It was yummy, for sure, but it also contributed to a lot of maintenance issues (bugs). OK, I -get- it, that was unsustainable. But the current state of affairs is now simply too DRACONIAN. Surely many of these tiny F/Rs -can- be done safely with -very- little manpower. There needs to be -some- middle ground.
So to my mind, the customer-friendly thing would be to go to the Feature Request list, pick just one or two POPULAR but small items (ie. not too labour intensive or risky to the project as a whole) and throw that into each new .0 build.
In short, the current policy of including NO new features (or at least none taken from the F/R forum) in .0 releases STINKS. And since the .1 or .5 releases tend to focus now on ‘sexy’ features like ‘sampler tracks’, this means that those small items we power users need simply LANGUISH FOREVER in the Feature Request forum. It’s a joke and a slap in the face.
I mean: why even -have- a ‘Feature Request’ forum if there is =never= a reasonable chance that anything good will ever come of it?
NOW NOTICE I WROTE ‘POPULAR’ ABOVE. I’ll see the odd ‘improvement’ in the update PDF. Fine. But whenever I read this I wonder exactly -who- these ‘improvements’ were made for? They almost -never- map to suggestions in the F/R Forum, so my -guess- is that they were ‘requested’ by bigshot users (Hans Zimmer, perhaps? 
) or the b-testers. That ain’t exactly market-testing, guys.
My suggestion, would be tp give us power users what we want: the odd, -occasional- improvement to editing which -we- request here… the kinds of improvements that don’t make it into marketing adverts and just as importantly, make us feel a bit HEARD. There should be -some- reward for putting in almost two decades of loyal service (beyond ‘you got the product, didn’t you, sonny?’)
I don’t want to go back to the Dark Time of unstable releases. But I -do- want to find SOME way to get the backlog of tiny (but important) Feature Requests actually -done- before I’m too old to work a keyboard.
—JC
