The effort involved in tuning is not bad at all. Many people are flying with default settings. There are really only a few settings that you need to touch in any case. Your Rate PID settings, which is true of any system. And the Throttle PID settings for Altitude Hold. The AH is currently the most problematic system. But it's not really the controller, IMO, the problem seems to be mostly people not building the copter right. Vibrations cause problems with the AH system. Honestly though, I have never had a problem. The 24 minute mission I ran was after having crashed that quad a few times (long story, but mechanical). There were a few bent things, some wobbly prop adaptors, and nicked and chipped, never-been-balanced props. I had run out of time and props, and so I just kept going, and had no problem at all. Another developer built a "Worst-Case-Quad", and he can't reproduce it either.
Anyway, assuming you build a good quad, I think it's quite easy to get these flying now. The reputation we earned for being difficult to tune to fly right (somewhat deserved) was largely due to the fact the controllers were poorly designed. It's not the case anymore.
For example, my new heli, I had it doing a perfect RTH within 4 battery packs. That's not bad. Now, obviously I'm quite experienced but... I don't think people should expect to buy something and be flying in 9 minutes. DJI advertises that, but then YouTube is littered with Phantom flyaway videos isn't it.
Ok, firmware updates are controlled by a core team. Randy MacKay is the lead. He works on it *full time*. When he thinks it's ready, it goes out to beta testers, and we beta test it. Then when we think it's ready, it goes out. We've had some bad issues in the past, but we haven't had a Crash-o-matic bug in a long time. Almost 12 months. Most issues are either due to users not using functions correctly, or functions not being able to save users from themselves. Again, same is true of any system. We try REALLY hard to not have any bugs after Beta testing, but most of them now are things that we just don't forsee. People doing things that we didn't think they would. That sort of thing.
Still, if you are concerned, the simple thing to do is wait. When a new release comes out, just sit back and relax, watch the forums. I'm a developer, and a beta tester, and a user. I have different machines for different purposes. I have a 450 heli I use for developing. But I won't put a new release on my 600 heli, or my Octo, until it's been out a few weeks. That may sound cynical but... I've spent enough of my own time and money on this, and I had to rationalize things a bit.
I do wish we had like a Gamma Test group. 100 guys with cheap quads who'll take it for a test drive before it goes "Stable". We have talked about doing a "Limited Release", but it hasn't gotten to that point yet.
So, Randy has been doing this full-time for about 12 months now. It hasn't been a free-for-all for about 12 months. And we've had no major bugs for 12 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I'm sure of it.