The Phidgets documentation recommends using an event-driven style of programming in general, but also says that in Matlab polling is necessary because Matlab does not support function pointers.
I suspect the second statement may be out of date. Matlab does have "function handles" and these are used for event-driven programming, for example in the Image Acquisition Toolbox.
It seems a pity not to be able to exploit Phidgets' functionality fully in Matlab. I wondered if anyone could comment on whether there are any plans to update the Matlab interface to allow an event-driven style of programming?