Logic Pro "features" (or therelack of) questions

The main reason it's smaller is much of the content is switched from lossless to lossy compression, making it smaller. You're mostly losing out on the extra apps although without support those may stop working with some future OS update.

I think that some of the loop content (sound fx) was officially accociated with Sound Track Pro, not logic.

I can see what you're saying and, in some ways I've always liked the idea of having a set of proper installation disks, but there probably does come a point where you won't be able to use them anymore if you keep updating your Operating System and use software updates for the other stuff you use.

I don't really think the App Store purchase of Logic is a bad idea over all - you have paid for that version of Logic, so it should always be available for you to download again - well, I suppose there's a 'within reason' idea there but it needs to be a reasonable length of time - I think some people are still happily using 7.2 because it may well work for what they want it to do.