The direct-to-USB-drive recording was the key reason I went with the Mackie over the PreSonus RM32AI, which our occasional sound guy has. Since I perform as well as handle monitoring and recording, I don't want to have to deal with a laptop. I also don't want to have my expensive Retina MacBook Pro sitting unattended at a bar. With the Mackie, I can start the recording right from my iPad on stage.
I do, however, really wish the maximum file size was increased to something well above 2GB to reduce the amount of stitching I have to do for long recordings. The manual implies this is due to limitations of some recording software. If some packages -do- handle larger files, though, the max size should be configurable to save the people with those packages the hassle of reassembling the recordings.