A Lot has been said since yesterday.
I think Craig and Chaoticone have struck a huge chord; users who EXPECT Mach4 to behave a certain way will get frustrated and leave. I personally think certain aspects of Mach4 should behave in a certain way, but I understand they don't and I find a work around. Some hobbyist just won't put the time in to fix a button or two.
The first machine we used Mach4 on was a Profile Knife Grinder, it took a long time to figure out LUA and Mach4 to get it working how we wanted it to, and to be honest it was a lot of bells and whistles over just getting it to work. However, the next machine I used Mach4 on a retrofit it took 1/8 of that time. I made a folder with all the custom code and button scripts to aid future retrofits. For us this is beneficial, but how many hobbyists will have 6 CNC Machines (and counting) to set up.
Chaoticone,
I find myself in Group 1 and Group 2.
We are not hobbyists when it comes to Mach4, we are a machine shop that make wood cutting tools, so we dig in and make Mach4 listen to us and has proved to be very worth while.
We just bought a Haas VF4 to up our capacity and some of the features on the Haas are incredible. What I love about Mach4 is the fact that I can take the features from the Haas control (which is awesome IMHO) and integrate them into future retrofits.
But getting back on topic. Is Mach4 really hobby material?
I agree that NFS could update the API more frequently to aid other users, I think certain configuration settings should be improved to be more plug and play (external buttons, scripts, etc), and the folder that has example macros and scripts should be updated more often.
The example folder can be filled with examples from this forum. If I had such a comprehensive source of information (a more extensive example folder) Most of my questions starting out would have been answered. I think Mach4 has great hobby potential, I just needs to be a little more streamlined.