In occasional quiet moments, I engage in idle speculation about what the sound editor market really needs at the moment, and what the next major advance might be. WaveLab is rather handicapped at the moment because the next version is 10 - a significant event numerically only because of our decimally constructed world. (Octal based worlds would have focussed on V8; our hexadecimal programmer cousins will be anticipating V16.)
There are about three paradigms I can think of - faster, more integrated and accuracy/efficiency. I don’t see any particular technology change that facilitates an order of magnitude leap forward in this (for example, quantum computing is still a way off). For most users, any improvement in a new version is going to be a series of 1% and 2% increments in their collection of particular needs.
In terms of major paradigms, in the past there has been the move from assembly language coding to high level language compiler to facilitate cross platform versions of the product (loss of efficiency masked by improvements in processor speed and memory capacity). Or changes in the UI - changes which can cause consternation in the established user base - a base that is small but significant in the overall world of audio. Expansion in the audio formats which can be addressed, increasingly broad and often esoteric, is a continual make-work for program designers. So evolution rather than revolution seems to be the future - despite what the marketers would like us to believe with each new upgrade.
So I have some sympathy for PG trying simultaneously to meet the three paradigms above, and also provide something that will provide the marketers with talking points at a launch (and I don’t recall WL ever having a significant ‘launch’ at an American AES event). I just expect a continual refinement of the work environment that WL has created up to now, and if it has advances in a particular feature or two that is important to me, then I will continue to be a user. When it comes, I will consider. Yes, it is nice to be surprised now and then, but the older I get, the harder it is …