I love waveform free

 

much of software is an emulation or extension of reality, (gotta start somewhere right??) - and so a word processor was a digital typewriter but being digital it was easily altered/extended with features difficult or impossible to create mechanically, such as spell checking or strike out/white out/ erase.

So to the DAW was precededed by a hybrid of a cross between a computer and a mixing board and a routing panel and a preamp.

so this was what the DAW emulated in software, originally all the faders were controlled by mice movements or keyboard shortcuts, now of course surface controller exist to replicate the feel of the original hardware like this. sort of a circle or a snake that eats its tail..

 

It's in the name. Digital. Audio. Workstation.
It's a software-based workstation for audio-related tasks.
A workstation, originally, is hardware+software complex that allows an engineer or a scientist accomplish their data or calculation goals all in one place. A DAW is that, purely digital, for audio.
Your argument is, it does too much so it's not specific enough to be a thing. This is just nuts. Them being a one-stop shop is the whole point.

 

The old context of a 'music workstation' were things like the Korg M/T/N/Trinity/Triton/etc, Roland XPs, Ensoniq's ZR/KT/etc... Unlike the prior analogs, you got a ton of pre-loaded sounds covering all sorts of things, along with an 8-16 track sequencer built in (some of the Yamaha's and Ensoniqs could load sample data too), ready to be tracked straight to tape/DAT when you were finished writing (or synced up to your Tascam Portastudio hah). Even my EIV samplers have a built in sequencer (power to those who can use it), those were 'workstations' too. Same shit, different day basically. Now that digital audio is pretty trivial compared to the 80s, the evolution was totally natural..

 

but still, it has always been a "category" of device or software, not "a marketing scheme" and I have no love of marketing or marketers, but language must be precise or it becomes rapidly useless for communication.

 

Bitwig Studio. Best of all worlds in one.