Because some of us work in mixed media production, there are benefits (and requirements) to being on the latest and greatest. We use production software other than just DAWs.
This is not about the latest and the greatest....
<soapbox rant>
As much as I love audio/engineering and production the pro audio industry always seems to lag behind other more (or equally) complex creative industries, like Video and Imaging. Within pro audio development, they can't even work together. If you are familiar with the Slate AAX & 64bit issue, this is blatantly obvious.
Top tier application developers in Video (which also has audio, many channels of it at that) and professional imaging industries are ready to go on day one. You will never hear of Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, or the likes not being "ready" for a major OS release. There is a lot of "technical" history / baggage behind this in the pro audio development world...But, that technical history was driven by business decisions. The application development world as it exists today, is quite different than it was when some philosophical business decisions were made by the music industry; decisions made out of fear, IMO. The reason it's different is because the consumption and digital distribution model has changed on this planet...Comparatively speaking the pro audio industry moves like molasses. I'm see Avid trying to make up ground today and catch up to companies like Adobe.
Reality, things are only going to start moving faster and the norm is no longer to have major releases, but consistent smaller evolutionary updates.
I'll speak to this because I have first hand experience. In the past, by law, companies were required to create a new "SKU" number for any physical boxed product that contained new features, even though they were selling soft goods (a software license). Each physical boxed product adds cost and overhead, not just in the materials, but also in regulatory approvals (for a "new" product", liabilities/warranties (differ by country) and channel (retail)/SKU management (the accounting of it all). To ship world wide, each of these products also needed to meet local regulatory laws. For example, to ship a product in Canada, every product must contain both English and French Canadian versions of text. This costs money! The exception to this were maintenance and "Service Packs". They still had the costs of distribution and other business overhead, but they were not considered "new" products, and were easier to manage, and didn't effect, support and warranty laws.
Additionally, physical versions (discs), of the software increase the chance of piracy (high cost in lost sales, and the cost of combating both legally, and in anti-piracy schemes...a la ilok) and prohibited these companies from including new features on a timely basis. This prohibition came both from a business perspective (cost, lead-time, and management), and was driven by the fact that each time a feature was added, by law, they had to generate a new SKU. The product of this scenario was that companies would hold back features to pack in one SKU (and WW variations). The exception to this, like mentioned above were maintenance and "Service Packs".
A very clear example of this was the release of Windows 95 OSR2. Prior to that release, there was not native USB support in Windows 95. For the reasons above MSFT had to create a "new" version of the operating system (USB was a feature, not a hotfix). Here is a kicker on that example (it's Throw Back Thursday after-all)...while it had a new SKU, it was distributed to OEMs only and it stared the whole OEM business at your local computer shop where you could get a version of the OS, provided you bought a motherboard. Remember those days?
What changed all of this is high speed broadband, cloud distribution, mobile apps (the business development, rapid technical development:features, and consumer expectation setting..can you imagine if you needed physical media to update each one of your apps on your phone?), and security patching. Now, "free" of retail SKUs, companies can feed new features at will and consider it as part of a service. Monthly feature updates are now part of the norm in the industry, driven by MSFT (Xbox and O365), Adobe with Creative Cloud, Apple (application feature updates), and now Avid has announced "Avid Everywhere".
This rant isn't about the need for the latest and the greatest...it's about companies staying relevant and in business in a world that is moving faster than them and where they are trying to compete for your dollar as a creative professional and consumer.
</soapbox rant>