hi there,
personally, I don’t think it became irrelevant. having the perform mode for MIDI tracks is great, but it doesn’t resolve the problem of having fast access to the perform mode for samples. you can easily imagine workflow where you have active MIDI and sample tracks, and in this scenario entering the performance mode for the samples part being in the midi sequencer view, has really long way to go. also, it resets all the tracks while switching back and forth.
so, what you are saying is that user should choose what performance mode to use, while the device could easily have some shortcut and solve the problem.