and unfortunately a lot of that software is simply career-making.
It's simply an arms-race that can't be won from the consumer perspective without applying adequate pressure to the companies to try and facilitate a legitimate release.
it's hard to run any kind of business software to run any kind of business when it's in the back of your mind whether or not Autodesk has pushed an update to break everything by the time you need to use the software and have actual clients and money waiting for the work.
I'd drop all my windows machines in a heart beat if those companies would consider the GNU/Linux market, but i'm not really holding my breath -- they make a ton of money on their captive audience.