> Unfortunately I don’t think the DX7 is hard to program just because of the user interface.

That was my first thought. And actually, I kept trying to understand (from the article) how exactly this UI makes FM programming easier. Does it? Or is that not the point?

Because one of my "sound designer dreams" is being able to get the sound in my head coming out of the machine using FM. I can do that with regular subtractive synthesis (more or less) but with FM, I feel like I'm twiddling knobs until I like the way it sounds. And that's with a really good interface!