Dawn has made an impact, how much is up to personal opinion.

Unlike other dedicated releases for poser figures, I think Dawn should have a much longer life span, simply because of the people that are behind her. But I think her potential has not even been close to have been reached at this point.

She will have a much slower grownt than any daz figures, simply because of the size of the team working on her. HW3d is a smaller company than DAZ, so it will take time before we see her fully fleshed out.

As for mending of fences. I think that simply depends on what you want mended.

DAZ and Smith micro have different goals in how they grow. DAZ makes money from content, and SM from the software (yeah, there is content paradice...but come on..really?). So as such DAZ is looking for ways to make the content better and better and building the technology to ensure that will happen.
The type of content that will work for poser quality products is a market that is already saturated. So they are finding ways of being able to make products that go beyond that level and give customers even more bang for their buck.

Because of this, the technology will continue to move in two different directions. That type of thing will probably never be mended.

Poser and DAZ are seperate entities, and they will only continue to drift apart as time goes on, and no amount of screaming for mending of fences will change that.  DAZ has no control over what tech poser wants to put into their software, but they know what they need for the future growth of their figures, so that is where they will grow.