Put the cheat file on the red card and hit the sequence? Already that sounds ridiculous. I don't have to enter the Konami code for NTR. I just hit select.
Let me mention that for Gateway it's Select too. He added that you "enter the sequence" because Gateway allows you to customize your button combo.
(And might I add, cheat files for Gateway are just .txt, which means they are significantly smaller than NTRs input format. ALSO, if you sincerely believe there's no reason for Gateway to exist, 90% of NTR cheats are just converted from Gateway format, this is because people don't wanna hook their 3DS up over wireless connection just to memory search and ram edit their game.)
I'm more curious who is booting their console over and over that changing software is apparently a chore. I haven't turned my 3DS off in a long time. Changing software is inherent to the system software. You're grasping at straws if that is a quirk of Gateway for you.
Just because you're not constantly using your 3DS doesn't mean that other people aren't. People are constantly turning their 3DS off and on because NTR is buggy and prone to crashes.
I think it's cute you particularly used "zero reports of Gateway users being bricked when using the latest version" as if Gateway can't just brick your consoles at any second and whim. As if it hasn't happened before.
I think it's cute you use the fact that it's happened before to say it'll happen again. I'll bet you didn't know that Gateway stopped the bricking, it actually just makes it impossible to play .3DS ROMs on DSTwo+ now. It brings up a "you've been scammed" message whenever you try to use the multirom menu. Of course, people haven't known about this nor cared because they don't need reasonable arguments to shit on Gateway. Legitimate Gateway cards haven't bricked a single 3DS since mid 2014, I believe.
What does Gateway do that CFW can't, if you mind my asking?
I'm a basic 3DS user. Although I don't use my Gateway that much, nor really play any games on my 3DS, I can tell you this. The drag and drop rom support is great, and we have a ton of the niche Japanese games that freeshop doesn't have due to no one dumping them. The cheat system surpasses NTR by a considerable margin as well. To the average person it would just seem like "put the plugin on my sd card and run it" but you have to think about how the cheats are made to actually understand why it's better. I've seen people in the past buy Gateway cards just for making cheats. Of course my perspective is a broad one, but I'm sure any other person could give you a plethora of advantages they feel Gateway has over CFW.
As far as I can tell, Gateway is trying to be CFW to stay relevant.
Gateway
is CFW.
I wouldn't even be surprised if this "surprise update" was just more homebrew with Gateway's name on it written in crayon.
You can't honestly deny the contributions they've made to the scene with their coding skill alone. Without them we'd still be in Crown3DS limbo by now. Just because they forked A9LH, an open-sourced and documented exploit, rather than creating their own from the ground up doesn't mean they're code thieves. If they had discovered A9LH, I'm sure some community Dev would just reverse engineer their code and steal it themselves and no one would bat an eye, much like everything else Gateway has done. Just another contribution that becomes unnoticeable to the vast majority. I have no clue why people say "they're spending their time stealing community code (forking open sourced and documented exploits), rebranding it, and adding teh brick code to it lel" when this sorta thing only happened once. Who cracked the 7.x save encryption? Who made the first public release of the majority of 9.2 exploits we use today in our CFWs?