But if it did that, then you wouldn't have that wonderful front-panel shortcut which plays the whole hard disk for you (press the bottom button three times).
Why does that need to be a shortcut, if you use that then it's gonna take several weeks, if not months for the playlist to finish :) So if it's something you're only gonna do once a month it doesn't matter if it's not the easiest playlist to select.
Some people probably have other button-press patterns memorized already,
Don't be silly, this is still pre v1 software, it's not time to start worrying about legacy support. If any improvement breaks old habits then so be it. And if you really want old button press combinations to work, then you'd better hope the empeg folks don't add any new features to the software, new features usually need a new menu item, and that would also break key combinations people have memorized.