I am happy to make the effort to program Mach4 to my liking but maybe you are not.
There's more to it then that.
Mach4 is not popular for a lot of reasons.
1. It's too difficult to set up. There's a lot of competition out there now, and you can argue that all of Mach4's competitors are easier to setup and use, and don't require any programming for the vat majority of users. It's possible to make a powerful program that's not overly complicated.
2. Cost. Mach4 is more expensive than it's competitors. But there is a legitimate reason for this. The real issue here is their business model.
Most of the competition offers a package of both hardware and software. Because they are making money on their hardware, they sell their software for a lot less money, or in some cases give it away for free.
Artsoft has to charge more for their software, because they don't sell software. Which leads to another issue.
3. 3rd party hardware. Mach4 decided to stick with the same flawed system they had with Mach3, where the user has to rely on a 3rd party to stay up to date with their plugins, or to even implement features that the user may need. How many motion controllers can be considered fully functional at this time, supporting all of Mach4's features? Remember, Mach4 was released over 3 years ago.
With the competiton's products, the hardware and software development is always in sync. New features work immediately, and you don't need to figure out who's at fault when something doesn't work.
I'm one of the people that has moved on to other software, although my old machine still runs Mach3.
I was an early purchaser of Mach4, over 3 years ago. I watched the (slow) development for over a year, before deciding it was time to move on.
In the same way that different people prefer different CAD and CAM programs, they also prefer different control software. Because Mach4 is so very different from Mach3, many of the tens of thousands of Mach3 users find that it's just too different from what they are used to.