[Motorola Droid 4] Jishkah:
See, I think of it differently. I agree with you that Snapshots are meant for public consumption, but you've got to remember that the Droid 4 is almost four years old. It was released in the first quarter of 2012 - back when smartphone technology was still relatively new - and so it has the performance of an early-2012 smartphone.

For the most part, CyanogenMod 12.1 runs about as well as can be expected on this old device. I don't think that anybody goes into the build with the expectation of it running like a brand new Android phone, or with the performance of the Droid 4's stock OS; they go into it expecting Lollipop performance on a phone that shipped with Froyo (Gingerbread?) and was officially upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich. That's a HUGE leap.

Likewise, app size has ballooned since a few years ago. I find performance hits on even CyanogenMod 11; I can't count the number of times that I've opened an app, waited, waited some more, waited even more, and then force-closed it because it wasn't doing anything but displaying a black screen. It's not just the operating system - it's the apps, which used to be ~30MB, max, but have since ballooned (even the more simplistic apps) to be upwards of ~150MB in size. Hell, I remember finding it ludicrous that the Facebook app was over 100MB in size, as of last year, but now? That's the norm.

That's kind of why I'd rather a Snapshot be based on stability, rather than performance. That's not to say that performance isn't important and shouldn't be factored into the decision, but, I mean, let's face it. Lollipop - all things considered - runs about as well as could be expected, on this old device. The problem with using performance as the main metric is that performance changes, over the years. It's a variable that can't really be accounted for. I remember CyanogenMod 11 running as snappy as could be, as early as last year, but now that apps are growing in size and demanding more resources, I'm lucky to not have to wait almost a minute or two for an app to open. Don't even get me started on Firefox, Facebook, or Google Maps. With performance being the main metric, would you consider that to be Snapshot-worthy?

I agree that performance should be a metric, but only so far as getting the most performance out of an Android device running a newer version of Android than was normally possible. Everything else is kind of outside of our realm of control, and variables change - yesterday's Snapshots may as well be today's Nightlies, when you factor in how much more demanding Android apps have become. Performance issues aside, I still use CyanogenMod 12.1 as a daily driver. I think that that makes it worthy enough, alone, for a Snapshot. It's when you're getting into "this OS doesn't even run well on a fresh install" territory that Snapshot status should be waited on.

EDIT: All of this isn't to say that we shouldn't ignore performance at all. Back when CyanogenMod 11 was being worked on, the app environment wasn't too strenuous, and so we were able to run the OS relatively well, all things considered. I just think that CyanogenMod 12.1 runs about as well as can be expected on a device this old. Performance is still a metric, should still be a metric, but, like, I'm using this as my daily driver. I'm typing this out on my phone, even. After this, I'll probably load up reddit is fun, open Facebook, send a few texts, load up Yik Yak. And I expect it to work, from past experience. We should definitely take into account the current performance (as opposed to future performance), but it runs well. It's mostly the apps that give the phone a run for its money, and users have control over the apps that they use and have installed. Just as you can't expect to run a high performance program on, say, a Celeron computer, I don't think that people should expect to run high-performance apps and heavily multitask on a Droid 4. The core operating system is fine, runs well, and I think that that's what matters the most.

The phone's stable, and performance is good. It's not great, by any means, but it's not "to its knees" bad. Not yet, anyway. It's mostly getting the apps installed and configured that brings the system to its knees. Once that's all said and done, it does a good job of maintaining itself.

And for reference, I'm running CyanogenMod 12.1 straight out of the box. No overclocking, no kernel tweaks, no patches, nothing.