Whereas I have been pretty happy with PhD2 and have had almost no problems with it, it is also true that having integrated software done by one party is almost always better than that by done two separate entities.
Using PhD2 also assumes that it will always be supported and improved at the same level that it has been so far. That may or may not be true in the future. Personally, I would be a bit uncomfortable depending on an outside source for something mission critical to my software.
In fact, the main reason that I moved to SGP a few years ago is because it did not depend on external programs like other sequencers that depended on FocusMax and MaxIm…
In fact, I have been generally been opposed to the requests made on this forum to allow use of FocusMax with SGP - and for exactly the reason above. So I find it odd that on the one hand folks to not want focus outsourced to FocusMax but on the other hand want to continue to outsource the guiding.