In every forum I have been involved with that centered around electronic music equipment, the complaints were always the same - not enough soon enough and/or too many bugs in the existing software or firmware. It seems to be a universal problem between the producer and the consumer.

I suppose one solution might be to Open Source the firmware and let the users have at it, like Roger Linn does with the Linnstrument midi controller. You can download the source code, download the development environment, and code to your heart's content. Short of that, the gap between what users want and what a company can/will invest in development will always exist.
Hopefully, the manufacturers spend at least a bit of time reading the major forums for their products to find out what folks really want. If so, then threads like this can be quite useful for both producer and consumer.
Tony