I hear you all.
But, like it or not, the rebreather will most likely be standard for recreational divers within the next decade or so. The cumbersome issues with OC are going to seem like a joke when we look at them from the future. All of the maintenance issues, consumables, education and techniques will be sorted out over time.
I am looking at the future here. To think that stuffing air into a tank and breathing it from a straw will always be the best option is short sighted.
Hell, eventually you will be able to swallow a pill that will allow you to breathe underwater and avoid any chance of DCS.
None of these statements are grounded in reality. I'm all about visionary thinking and leveraging the latest in technology to improve the lot (that's what I do for a living) but no matter what you think about how CCR will improve in the future, the demand will not be there. There is nothing cumbersome about OC when compared to CCR. There aren't droves of rec divers lining up to get CCR units or training. Walk on any cattle boat (a population of divers that is FAR more representative of the overall market than die-hard divers) and see what they think about rebreathers. They just aren't interested.
There is nothing short-sighted about thinking OC will be around for awhile. It's a mature technology, cheap, easy to maintain, relatively easy to commercialize (dive ops, etc- especially in tropical locales), available world-wide with essentially standardized equipment, and its more or less idiot-proof in the realm of recreational diving. The same cannot be said now, or in the next 10 years, with CCR. And I'm pretty sure Bill Stone, Richard Pyle, and the folks at Poseidon, while making the most serious strides to put your "vision" into action, would agree for the time being. Niche market, yes. Direction of the industry as a whole? No.
Now move that argument up the spectrum to technical diving, and you can start to build a case. Logistics and costs involved w/ deep technical OC dives vs. CCR start to make a compelling argument for closed-circuit. Want to know why? Less variable cost per dive, much less complicated logistics, and more safety (arguably) on deeper dives. The tangible break-even for costs for gas alone is a matter or a couple of years. The increased intangible benefits in time saved, having more flexibility in your profiles, decreased decompression times, no longer gas-constrained, not tying up bottles with mix you can't use, etc. is worth quite a lot. These are the types of arguments that have brought CCR to the mainstream in technical diving but the same arguments do not hold water with single-tank, recreational NDL diving.