Hi,
Maybe the basic PICaxe chips haven't been updated for some time, but the PE
has, with the addition of another program "slot" (and Table memory) in most of the M2s, for example. IMHO very few PICaxe users actually employ the existing chips anywhere near to their full capabilities, such as the 512 bytes of RAM, Weak Pullup resistors, Comparators (with internal DAC bias), Interrupt on Change flags, Very Low power consumption, etc., etc.. Of course it might be "nice" to have a few more updates to the Program Editor, but there is already some confusion with "too many commands to do the same thing".
Also, there is a definite advantage in its continuity, or "Backwards Compatibility", particularly in an Educational environment. It seems to me that too often an Ard**no application gets "broken" because a "Library" function has been "updated". Recently, I was surprised to see a "new" product that used an "8051 core", for which I was writing (Assembler) Code more than 30 years ago. If PICaxe ever offered a genuine assembler capability (not really a hint! ) then I think I could probably pick up the PIC coding that I was writing in the 1990s. And some of the components still in use, like the 555 timer, were designed around 50 years ago!
Cheers, Alan.