I had some BTC in a software wallet this year and so when the cash, and then gold, forks took place I was able to just get my private keys from the wallet and thereby access my cash and gold bitcoins.
However, if my BTC were instead in a hardware wallet at the time of the fork, would I have had no way of ever claiming the new forked coins? Because, as I understand it, there is no way to retrieve one's private keys from such devices?
If you use Ledger or Trezor, they will sooner or later implement support for that specific forked coin, so no problem claiming. However don't expect them to support upcoming shit forks, like Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin xxxxx whatever.