The thing is many users, myself included, use cubase for a hobby, so the extra is a significant amount, and I have 2 dongles as both C7 and WL8 were bought boxed, so it’s not a huge problem.
In this economic climate and with the technological changes developers, like any business, cannot afford to ignore the needs or requests of their customers, and given the amount of posts and views in this thread, it is clearly an important topic.
I don’t mind the dongle in my desktop DAW but if I had to record remotely with a laptop I’d use Reaper on it and transfer the tracks into Cubase. I wouldn’t want to be worrying about the dongle getting stolen, lost or broken.
It is one thing to say, “Hey Steinberg, the dongle is inconvenient and I would be even more interested in your product if I didn’t have to use it.” It is even acceptable to say, “I won’t buy another product that requires it.” This is what the feature request forum is for…
It is another to say, “I can’t believe I have to use a dongle! I am the customer and you have to make me happy. I can’t live by the terms of the transaction I have already agreed to.” This is just whining.
It is so lame to whine about a deal after one has agreed to it.
Never agree to terms that are not acceptable to you. If enough agree, then of course, the vendor will have to make an adjustment. If you give in and buy anyway, then you are just confirming that the terms were reasonable.
That´s the point…
And on that I fully agree, and as a user that is the deal I think most agree with, but as a business it is something I believe steinberg should address BEFORE people vote with their wallets.
RitchieM, maybe I’m misunderstanding your post, but users have been voting with their wallets for years now, and they are saying, “Okay, I’m cool with having to use the dongle.”
Sorry Steve, you’ve misread my ballot. Mine says “I’ll put up with the dongle another year because the pros of sticking with it still outweigh the cons of moving to Logic”
Not quite the same…
Now I’m completely lost. I was responding to RitchieM. 
I don’t mind the dongle …infact I like it 
I just wish everything else used it instead of having to buy an iLok!
This is my point entirely, the feature sets between DAW’s is now so close that it really is down to workflow and other factors that may affect an individuals decision, one of those being the dongle. When PT was the only game in town for reliable track counts, or the Cubase MIDI features (obviously still the best, but others are catching up) then a certain amount of complacency was common, but that just CANNOT be the case in 2013.
$teinberg must be soo pissed that they cant get a dongle working with ipads.
Catching up, how?
Does it matter about specifics? All DAWs feature sets are arriving at the same place, they have to in order to compete. Same with cars (want to know what tech will be on the family motor in 3 years, look at the S Class now), there is ultimately homogeny in all competing products, it’s the USP that counts, or, what will stop you buying one over the other.
If the dongle works for you, great, but I doubt that can be said of the whole.
Word! Big time!
{‘-’}
All this threats about the dongle eventually ends in 3 points:
I’m a stupid #3
You made a statement about MIDI in relation to DAW’s in general.
Yeah! Me too! 
#3 here as well.
+1
{‘-’}
I think that we have unfortunately reached a point in time, where the remaining viable option for Steinberg will be to do the Internet validation scheme. In this light, I would say that a dongle is the better alternative. There are a couple of improvements that I would like to see though.
The ability to have the eLicenser on a local network, so that other local computers could be used, without moving the dongle around. This should not be compromising, since I believe that most users only own one license per product anyways. And the ones that can afford it, would probably buy additional licenses anyhow, since that would keep their progress from being interrupted in case of network problems.
The ability to have a secondary COPY of the USB eLicenser with all my licenses. It is really a concern, to have to call around and reactivate my licenses if it were to go. I own licenses from FabFilter, Steinberg, VirSyn and Waldorf. All which uses the eLicenser, and in case my eLicenser were to go, I really am not looking forward to the hassle, if this were ever to occur.
The argument for copy protection I support, absolutely, but not at the expense of the user who wish to pay for the products. Sure, it is preventing piracy, to a point, but it is also inconveniencing legitimate customers.
A greater concern, IMO, is the way that continuous upgrades are becoming the norm. This in DRM land is better than good, even though the scheme in my opinion is a total rip off. E.g. you buy Cubase 4 for $500, and upgrade to every version at the cost of $200 each, up to C7, which totals $1,100. Someone else buys that same C4, but decides to skip upgrades until C7, which for this person is $300, and that brings the grand total of $800. Fairly big difference, and if the upgrade cost increases, so does the difference.
Well now, some arguments will be “no one is forced to upgrade” and “they also cannot use the new features”, etc. but I have yet to get to my point. Companies (in general) put out so much software of absolute crap quality, that a lot of times you don’t even get the value for which you paid, and certainly not when you paid for it. The upgrade cycle actually benefits from this. E.g. If you have no problems with C4, then what’s the real incentive to upgrade? You could actually feel comfortable staying with what you are familiar with until you need some newly presented feature, which are harder for companies to come up with. As it is now, you are compelled to upgrade since you are still experiencing problems, on your system, and worse, in some cases the problems from the past are promised to be fixed in the newer version, which you now have to pay for, even though you technically already did. A feature that got lost in the previous version shows up as a new feature in a new version is a classic too… Maybe C5 will improve my situation. Maybe C6 will… Hopefully C7…
It is in no way particular to Steinberg, it is a global phenomena. The same thing is happening with operating systems, and the whole thing appears to be increasing too. E.g. apps that just “closes” and you or the system restarts it and you are left with a greater fear of loss… an upgrade will surely fix it, eh?
This may not have been a plan per se, but it’s also not fiction. I may have bent things a bit, but there is no denying the underlying red line. It’s 2013 and there is no HAL to be found on Amazon… if Clarke’s right, his timing was way off. Maybe the people behind Idiocrazy are more accurate… 