Point #2 seems to have been addressed in Measurment Studio 2012 Beta. In the "What's New" document, it says:
Support for Waveform Data Buffers—You can use the waveform data buffer methods, GetBuffer, GetWritableBuffer, GetTimeStampBuffer, and GetPrecisionTimeStampBuffer, to read data and time stamps from and write data to analog waveforms and complex waveforms without making a copy of the data.
