It's 2015, still no standard decent drum machine/editor?

I guess I, and thousands of other users, aren’t anyone then! We do this daily! The layout of Cubase’s drum editor hasn’t changed much in over 20 years. Why do you think that is? Because it perfectly as is!

Cubase is program that caters for many musical styles. If you don’t like the Drum Editor, there the Beat Designer plug-in (as peAk pointed out). Otherwise move off to Abelton Live (which is more or less useless for anything but loopbased musical styles).

Learn to use the right tool for the job, and stop complaining that you can’t hammer in a nail with a saw!