Just a quick response...
I will talk to Ryan about including the ZigBee firmware release notes with the updater software similar to PC Access.
As far as the controller firmware, the official location for firmware release notes is in the PC Access release notes. There is always a PC Access release with every firmware release.
As far as people who are not using PC Access, sorry. Since most of the new 3.0+ automation programming features can only be configured using PC Access I would strongly recommend that ANYONE who is setting up a controller have PC Access. Using the console to set up a controller was a great feature in the beginning and is still quite useful for making some quick settings changes, so we have retained this functionality. IMHO, it is much easier to set up a controller using PC Access, also being able to backup your configuration or print it out, something that can only be done with PC Access, is well worth the price.