Why is this so hard?

I've been trying to get a performance setup going with a laptop on OS X leopard, some max/msp apps, sooperlooper and some midi/osc hand and foot controllers.

I'm trying to get sooperlooper to act as a master, slaving max/msp and the sequencer. Max triggers instruments in the sequencer as well.

Mainstage: Likes to lock up and complain about drivers not being up to date. It's fine when I turn the keyboards off during startup and then back on afterwards. But then I lose all my mappings. Not good in a live setting - I have other things to do besides map 5-10 controllers. No tempo timed effects due to the lack of a sequencer - but that's not a big a deal as the former issue.

So on to....

Logic: I use the environment to route my keyboard to some synths, route those into sooperlooper and all is well. max/msp is syncing to sooperlooper like a dandy. Let's sync Logic to sooperlooper's midi beat clock. Oh, whoops, Logic CANNOT DO THIS!

So on to...

Ableton(14 day trial)
Setup working nicely (except for some max/msp problems now resolved). Buuuut, routing midi from my pedal to SL is not working inside Ableton. No big whoop, I fire up midi router and get it going. Sooo, how to I switch patches in the middle of a song. It seems I cannot, without making my midi controller change midi channels on patch changes. It cannot.

Ableton day 2...
Looking foward to a little jam. SooperLooper is no longer responding to my footboard. Well...it responds to the first record, or overdub it receives, but nothing after that. I mess with it for 1.5 hours. It starts working. Then stops. I cannot get it to work again. I go to the forums. I cannot remember my old username. There is no way to retrieve it. I register a new account. An admin must approve it.

It's been a bit of a struggle, althought I managed to get the Logic setup working the best and make some pretty sounds.