[namnibor]

Tweakhead, you hit the proverbial nailS on their head in what you wrote!! The midi standard might be 'old' and perhaps could in itself use an update but the point am making it was and IS still quite a ground breaking event to get all manufacturers to come on-board with an uniformed standard.

The very reason I dropped learning Pro Tools not very far into it was AVID's insistence on being exclusive from everyone and even REWIRE has its issues if AVID decides they do not wish to play nice with say Reaper, for instance as an easy example.
I understand the history and it unfortunately ALL comes down to Consumerism and Marketing; simply MONEY! Coming back to synths after military career/college/more military, it still baffles my mind how fraking *confusing* it is today to decide on a great Audio Interface without throwing ALOT of cash down throats of RME. I know nothing admittedly, about computer code and such but SURELY stable drivers should not be that hard to produce.
Then there's the vst/au/rtas, let alone all the variables in platforms/O.S., and think these things among many other variables leading down the greed path are going to allow hardware to prevail for some time.
I do not own anything by Apple but it seems the iPad is showing some awesome innovators writing synthesis apps for it. Wolfgang Palm is whom caught my attention in his Wavetable Synth App and you do not hear of these app makers producing versions of their apps for Android devices, et al, do you?
Anyway, I think another HUGE hurdle the "all software synth world" has to jump is ceasing making so many shitty midi controllers.
I too think Access will more than likely counter with something to blow away the potential competition that DSI Prophet 12 *may* give them. It could even be a departure from the Virus architecture and something so totally new it blows our minds!
As SSD hard drives are coming down in price it almost would make sense to utilize them for the software inside the hardware. Native Instruments have done what seems to make sense.
Anyway, it IS a wonderful time to be making music and playing with sound!