Yes, it is faster - Cloning my installation took 4 minutes with v 5 and takes only 2 1/2 minutes with v 6. - and the enhanced snapshot functionality is a plus, perhaps even a major plus, but they and all the other enhancements are no more than bells & whistles in the face of what may be the end of CCC's historic functionality: cloning. They are NOT the stuff of which a paid upgrade is made!
Judging from the hasty implementation of the v 6 upgrade procedure - without its even having been updated from the v 5 procedure - I've gotten the feeling that it's a "panic" move made while perpetuating CCC's cloning functionality remains at least a possibility.
Unlike TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior, and others of their ilk, CCC doesn't provide functionality to which users can cling even when it's no longer necessary. When it can no longer do its job, well...it's done.
I still don't know what my initial glitch in CCC 6 was that failed to produce bootable clones but they are bootable now albeit kernel extensions are still not cloned. From conversations with other developers that may be fixed in macOS 12 or 13 when Apple finishes work on the tool kit third party developers need to completely remove their extensions from the system area. That will also permit third party extensions to run without reducing the security settings on the boot volume. But that ball is in Apple's court.
Your observation about TTP and DW is IMHO very astute.
Whether CCC can survive or not is open to question. The enhanced snapshot management features together with data cloning/backup from my viewpoint make CCC the only viable competitor to Time Machine for backups, but Time Machine's integration into the OS itself make it really tough competition.
