Take FL Studio's example. Before resizable windows became a part of it (custom controls), FL used default Windows controls like Lists, menus, text boxes etc. Now everything is a custom control, that's why it has a Mac version now

 

Actually because I have a feeling we may be of an age within 10 years of the other and likely born in the same country, you'd be familiar with Cubase on the old ATARI 1024 ST. It actually had plugins but they weren't called VST's they were MIDI plugins (application-based) pre DAW's like SAW and Emagic - Logic then Logic Audio. Cubase and Logic used to crash my poor little ATARI system until I got the then unheard of 4MB upgrade which then apparently nobody would ever need ...
Then as you know they released Cubase VST then back to just Cubase again....so on and so forth...

 

My recollection is that C-lab's Creator for Atari was introduced in 1987. I ran it on very rare occasions in my Sydney studio but it didn't get much use. I can't remember it having plugins but once I got my first Macintosh IIci I could run a couple of synths and a sampler.

 

Yes they got smart in the later versions and you had to disable it if the user selected all without enough RAM, reload it and go into the settings and tell it only to load a few selectively - then restart it again - it became painful. I moved to EMAGIC logic for the scoring facility then Logic Audio then the rest is pretty much history... I was born in Sydney and lived and worked as a musician/composer there through the 80s and 90s but I live overseas now.

 

Last edited: Mar 5, 2021

...plugins that run on +10yo sharc dsp chips that already were cheap&slow, 10 years ago, that probably only cost a few tens of bucks each, and were happily sold at 1700 $/€ for an octo card.
Not only those dsp chips were slow&cheap, but UAD probably even got a few extra 40...50..or 60% off, as they must have purchased tens of millions of those chips. So many, that they are still using them, today.
And I bet , by 2025, they will still be using the SAME chips !
Now, if we check the +10yo chip they use, and if we grab the equivalent in price, in 2021/22, the 2021/22 version is probably 5..10...or even 20 times more powerful/faster.

But hey, just like amd or nvidia would never release a ultra powerful graphic card, that would run ALL modern and future titles at 8k120fps ultra max settings + full scene raytracing, and gamers would only need to replace it every 10 years, instead of every 18 months,
Uad would never release a much more powerful card, with 5 or 10 times more processing power...most users would only need a simple SOLO card, instead of a quad or octo card. No. The processing power needs to be low... so tens of thousands of studios and users must buy 1 ..2..or even 4 octo cards !

Yes... if uad today announced a new uad card, with new modern share dsps, 10 times faster than the previous generation, most users would try to sell their quad or octo cards, and would buy one single SOLO card, much cheaper but also much more powerful.

And because Uad don't want to release a new product that uses a new dsp chip, that will automatically be much more powerful, users will be stuck with the old&slow sharc dsps...until 2025....2030... and well beyond that date !

So come check this comment, by 2030... and you will see their uad4 or uad5 systems are still using the same 20yo chips !
Their dsp were and are so slow, that some particular plugins can max out a chip, with just a miserable stereo instance, at 44/16.
Lol, the people who work at 48/24, or 96/24, must laugh... laugh... when they insert 3 or 4 plugins on a few tracks... and the dsp meter for their octo card displays...99% usage !

I would bet even an average computer and cpu from 2015 can easily run 10 to 20 times more instances than 1 octo card...!