Whatever happened to looking forwards and creating new things? it seems with synths that time has not only stood still but is moving backwards to an era when Noddy Holder was on Top of the Pops.
As much as I like the old VCO, VCF model, I feel that music is being held back by a general lack of new sounds. The 80s wouldn't have sounded the way it did without the Yamaha DX7 and Roland D50. The 90s had the Korg M1 workstation.
Don't get me wrong, the old kit had the perfect user interface, controls and no menus. But that's not to say a new synth type couldn't have knobs and switches.
The last big leap was physical modelling and Yamaha's format synthesis. But they suffered from really awful interfaces. The Yamaha FS1R was a tiny box of tricks, not unlike the early FM boxes like the TX81Z, so was too cumbersome to use. Computer based editors seem to have fallen by the wayside too.