That was one of the original problems, but it doesn't apply to all implementations. Look at Dolphin Smalltalk for example. At its time, it is easily the best windows development tool, having very nice integration with native controls
and ActiveX support. I would go as far as saying using it for
only exploring and poking at ActiveX controls alone is well worth the license fees. And look where it went. Quite sad really.
Oh, and the free (Community) version is still available for download at http://www.object-arts.com/.
Oh wait a minute. I just accessed the web site to make sure it's correct. And it looks like it's alive again. Woohoo!!