I feel the same way, and I've been trying to get away from Cake for a while, but the fact that everything except the quirkiness of the ORM is so nice that I stick with it.
Also, the next version is supposed to redo the ORM to return actual models.
I wonder if the performance will be better or worst though. Creating tons of objects might impact it but they might be able to do more lazy loading to help.
Also, the next version is supposed to redo the ORM to return actual models.