Oh yes, I agree that the MME / WDM standard is old. And I thought you might be discussing its use in BIAB here, or even the WAS driver, but perhaps not.

What 'loads of people' want in those 'loads of small studios' might not be what is needed; it might only be what they were led to believe they needed.

If those people have a DAW, how many programs need to be open at once to record? And if they aren't recording, why does low latency matter? It doesn't matter in post production. And you don't need software anymore to avoid latency; get an interface that supports Direct Monitoring. Finally, you might have seen this statement near the end of the article: "In summary, each application type has different needs regarding audio latency. If an application does not need low latency, then it should not use the new APIs for low latency."

BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors