February 6, 2016 editorial: comments

(Multi)Touch Me Baby

If you listen to computer experts, our mice, and perhaps even our computer keyboards, may soon go the way of the floppy disk and the Palm Pilot — discarded relics of a less sophisticated computer age. The multitouch screen is the wave of the future, and we’ll soon all be pointing and pawing at our computer screens.

When I’m struggling to select text on my iPhone, and every finger gesture gets me to the wrong word, I sometimes think, “Geez, what’s it going to be like when even my computer has no mouse?” Say what you want about mice, they’re very accurate. You can point to a precise spot on the screen very easily.

I bring this subject up because when I was at NAMM recently, I saw a new DAW from a company called Lumit Audio (we covered it here) that’s fully multi-touch enabled for the Microsoft Surface tablet, which runs Windows OS. Every function that can be controlled by a mouse or keyboard on a standard PC can be handled by touch gestures on the Surface.

While I’ve never used the Lumit Audio software, I do have DAW software on my iPad, including the new Auria Pro from WaveMachineLabs and Steinberg’s Cubasis. Being iPad apps, they’re completely operated via multitouch gestures, and some of the actions, for example, scrolling and zooming, are a lot easier than they’d be with a mouse and keyboard. On the other hand, the iPad's display is not that big, and I feel a little bit cramped when trying to use some of the more crowded screens on those apps, particularly the mixing consoles.

If you have a relatively recent MacBook Pro, you’ll know that Apple has integrated multitouch gestures into its laptops. Although some of the gestures, such as pinching with your thumb and finger to zoom in and out, are quite handy, I know from experience that it’s easy to unintentionally trigger actions when you’re just trying to point and click. Fortunately, Apple allows you to deactivate gestures you don’t want to use.

So do you like the idea of producing music on computers that are controlled via multitouch screens? Or what about producing directly from your iPad or other tablet? Do you think it will be better or worse than the old desktop-with-mouse-and-keyboard paradigm? Are you looking forward to the multitouch era, or are you hoping it holds off for a while?

And here comes the segue (don’t worry, not a Segway), speaking of iOS, you should check out our story this week, Five Top iPad Synths You Might Have Missed. None of them cost more than $25 (one is as little as $6), and they create sounds that rival desktop synth plug-ins.